Odyssey
by Sputnik Writer
Summary: The epic tale of three University students and their heroic efforts to escape the murderous shadow of the Superstorm.
1. Prologue : Mauritius 2057

Hiya all! Sputnik here, retroactively adding a cheery greeting to this prologue. Also this is a polite little notice from me, in which I wish to inform you that can you please, if you read this chapter, read at least three more. This chapter is merely a set up to be paid off at the end of the tale, and if you judge the rest of 'Odyssey' entirely on this chapter then you are grasping entirely the wrong end of the stick, and you are truly judging a book by its cover.

Cheers!

P.S. www.joinme.info

**Port Louis, Mauritius, 2057**

It was May, the old woman reflected, standing on the balcony of her elegant colonial style house, but this did not excuse the fact that there was a light snow drifting from a cobalt blue sky. This was the tropical paradise of Mauritius; snow here was once something on TV, once something fun and treasured. But the landscape had changed much in fifty three years, gone were the waving palms on the beachfront, gone was the dense rainforest which should have been curving away into the distance to her right and left. Instead now stood the bones of a thick deciduous forest, and an inviting carpet of technicolour leaves clinging to the ground. And now this too was vanishing beneath the thin, clinging veil of the first snow of the season.

The woman sighed, hugging her arms and staring out to a grey sea, foamy and wind-whipped. No more traditional fishing boats set out into those treacherous waters, in the first years after the world had changed the new conditions had swallowed many of the flimsy vessels with an almost contemptuous laziness. Now if any fishing was done, it was by a few powerful trawlers. Even the nature of the catch had changed. The thousands of tropical species – flora and fauna so varied and rich in number as to boggle the mind – had vanished within months. For many years the catch had been of species native to once more temperate waters, the large slow fish that had once been the foundation of many vanished economies, and were now the foundation for the new.

As she watched, one of these trawlers powered its way away from the island, and out into the vast Indian Ocean, still the largest body of water in the planet that was not partly frozen in the colder months of the year. Even so, in the depths of winter large chunks of ice were plainly visible out to sea, having broken off from the vast southern ice cap and drifting in the currents to be melted once it reached near enough to the Equator for the temperature to finally reach a Mediterranean style climate. That however was many miles to the north, so the people of Mauritius, the natives and two million refugees and their descendents watched the ice float serenely by every winter, and only a few remembered a time when all had been different.

Today was a day to think about the past, the lady thought as a light breeze whistled in off the sea, piercing her flowing night gown, sending a chill through her bones, and drawing a dull ache from her left arm. Yes, today was precisely the right day to think about all that had gone before them, after all, today there would be a funeral.

And not just any funeral. It was the funeral of her husband, and her husband had been a very special man. Which is why Mauritius' few remaining hotels were currently all packed with people here for the biggest memorial service the island had seen for many a year. The man who would be buried today was a Saviour, one of those special breed of men who had gone into the frozen wastelands of both ends of the world to save the millions who had survived the Storm. And once that mighty task was completed, the were Saviours were to salvage from the wreckage of civilisation the tools and the knowledge to keep humanity going until at last the earth was ready to shake off its freezing cloak and humanity could once more claim the lands that it had lost.

It was hard and dangerous work. Many Saviours had died, and still their work was not completed. But Saviours were not destined to grow old. Instead they toiled ceaselessly until Mother Nature lashed out and claimed another life to add to the toll of billions She had taken fifty-three years ago. But the man who was to buried today was different. He had not died in the field. He had worked and worked until finally he was able to retire. But years of perilous missions into the icy expanses had come with a fateful price. This Saviour had lived for a decade after his retirement but he was a tired pensioner for those ten years, old before his time for a man who should have been active and vital until his death many years from now.

The old lady remembered with a secret, sad smile at just how alive he had once been, another lifetime ago, beneath the bright August moonlight that streamed through the bedroom window onto their bodies. Fifty-three years, but the memory was still as clear as a bell, undiluted by time and age, it was always with her. Just as the memories of the Storm would always be with her. Some things were too monumental to forget…


	2. Chris

Whoa! Reviews! Well, erm, cheers to Kai and subject2reality. Didn't really expect any reviews quite so soon, or ever since this has nothing really to do with the movie other than the weather. Still, what the Hades, at least some bugger likes it and that's what's important. However, if more people feel the need to review go ahead. You can even slate me for not having Sam or Laura or indeed any character from the movie in it, except possibly for good ol' President Blake, being thick on American TV, but that's for another chapter.

Also, I am aware there are flocking birds in this chapter just like in the movie. Well, all I can say is 'Tough'. Just because it happened in America doesn't mean it can't happen in the rest of the world.

Anyway read on… and for the love of God/Allah/Buddha/whoever (delete whichever is inappropriate) please review. And if I missed a deity in that last sentence DO NOT tell me. I am wrong and you are right and I feel no need to argue about it. Just assume we did argue and I lost. There. Happy? I bet you feel better already.

PS www.joinme.info

**Aberdeen, Scotland, November 2004 ****  
**It was a sound unlike any other that caused Chris Emond to look up into the roiling November sky. It was an unearthly, alien sound that was instantly out of place in the Granite City, and along the entire length of the mile-long Union Street people stopped what they were doing and craned their necks skywards.

The sight that greeted ten thousand people was something so awe-inspiring that for two minutes the normally bustling city centre of Aberdeen was still and silent but for that ghostly, piercing noise. People stood and stared and gaped at the sky, pointing to the spectacle that now gripped the attention of the city.

Birds. Thousands, maybe millions of them, massed together in clusters so tight it was difficult to see the clouds through the dense flocks of swarming birds. They filled the sky from horizon to horizon, wings beating in almost perfect unison. Across the darkened sky they moved, flowing almost like oil on the dark surface of the stormy North Sea.

It took ten minutes for the birds to pass, and the strange thing about it all was not one single bird diverted from its frantic course South. It was if every single one of them was following an invisible line in the sky, and not deviating in the slightest. Chris had seen birds flocking before in the summer at his home in Galashiels, on the border of Scotland and England, and not once had he seen behaviour like this. Not just the perfectly straight flight path, but the numbers of them, the speed they were going, the fact that not one of them was trying to eat or attack or hump another. All of these Chris had never seen before in his life, and that's what made it so skin-tinglingly spooky.

And then they were gone. And the sky was hauntingly empty and suddenly silent. All that could be seen were the towering grey skies that skidded in from the north, bringing with them a steely chill that penetrated the granite buildings like a knife.

Chris shivered, shook his head to dispel the eerie atmosphere which had descended upon the city, then looked at his watch and realised he was going to be late for work because of all this. He cursed, quietly so nobody on the street would hear him, then shoved his hands in his trouser pockets and began marching again down the pavement.

Chris was – technically at least – a student doing a Masters degree in Film Studies at Aberdeen University, although his bank was under the impression that he was studying Contemporary and International Military History. Aberdeen University itself thought he lived in his old house three miles outside of Galashiels and kept sending their vaguely threatening letters to that address. Really he was very nearly broke, constantly on the run from the landlady who was demanding the rent from two months ago, and not at all happy with his life.

But now he had got this job, and was finally raking in some sweet, sweet money. Sadly he was about to be late on his third day on the job. This was extraordinarily bad, since he had toiled for two months to get a crappy job serving tea and sandwiches at the freezing cold railway station.

Chris knew he wasn't really cut out for a job that meant meeting hundreds of strangers every day. He didn't like having to smile and pretend that he was happy to serve these people expensive tea and coffee. He didn't like that he'd more or less starved in the two months since he'd got up here and run out of money, and as a result was now as skinny as a rake. He didn't like the fact that he couldn't afford hair wax and as result his dirty blond hair sat unstyled on top of his angular head. He didn't like that his mind was wandering off on crazy tangents like this when he was supposed to be hurrying to work.

He laughed to himself at that last thought. Then the smile vanished from his face and he once again increased his speed. Moving fast helped keep the cold out, which was especially useful since he was dressed only in his company uniform of trousers and t-shirt, with just a thin jumper for insulation. Basically he was freezing, and he was just glad that the last week or so had seen temperatures much higher than normal, because he couldn't afford a decent coat, and even if he could, he kept up a committed 'sk8er' style and as such probably wouldn't be seen dead in a decent coat.

It didn't really matter that he couldn't skate; it was the image that was important, despite frequent protestations that he didn't care what other people thought about him. That was more or less a lie, of course. He knew that practically everybody said that sooner or later. So he shivered in inadequate clothing, which even if he'd had the money to buy some more would remain just as inadequate but ever so fashionable; just a target for the mono-brain-celled Neds which roamed Scottish streets in their tracksuits searching for higher life forms to beat up and steal mobile phones from.

Damn! He was slowing down again. Apparently he was unable to think and move swiftly at the same time. This wasn't good; he attributed it to the sparse diet of spaghetti and mints and a rare slice of cake or two he had been living off since September.

By the time he reached the Millets Outdoor Store on the corner of Union Street and Union Terrace he was already late for work, and had forgotten the creepy exodus of birds which had held him – and the city – captive as the strangest thing anybody had ever seen. But right now all he could think about was how late he was and what his new boss would say.


	3. CJ

Hey, I'm back! Sorry for the six month (or whatever it is by now) layoff but I was back in Yorkshire for Christmas and New Year with no connection to t'internet. But in that time I have been doing a shitload of research which ought to mean this story has a bigger grounding in reality than it has any right to. Well in theory anyway, some of it may seem daft but as far as I can tell it's accurate-ish. Anyway, I have discovered the British Antarctic Survey website to be damned useful, and also I discovered an awful lot by reading '_The Coming Global Superstorm_' by Art Bell and Whitley Streiber (which you may or may not know was the book that inspired '_Day After Tomorrow_') and from now on in will be incorporating bits from that into this great story.

Secondly, I appreciate the fact that a cautionary tale of the perilous state of our future climate is now technically set in the past. Well, tough, people still take lessons from '_1984_' and that passed all of twenty-one years ago.

Other than that, thanks for reviewing those that have reviewed, and let me remind everyone that all characters in this are FICTIONAL and any resemblance to persons living or dead is a coincidence of such enormous magnitude that it will never happen again in your lifetime, or the lifetime of the next twenty-seven generations of your descendents, so chill the fuck out.

Cheers!

PS www.joinme.info

Aberdeen, Scotland, November 2004 

CJ Greenough, stood in the window of the Millets Outdoor Store on the corner of Union Street and Bridge Street and currently arranging some incredibly expensive hiking boots so they would look incredibly tempting to buy to passing shoppers who would use them perhaps once in their lifetime, tapped heavily on the glass before him as he saw his flatmate scurry by. But Chris didn't see him, his head too low and his attention obviously too far away to pay any attention to the outside world.

"Bollocks to you then," CJ muttered, returning to his task of organising expensive boots to make them look expensive but still enticing. It was dull, and he was tempted to stick a pair of joke glasses on them or something. Not that he had any, but if he did, that would be the thing to do.

He stood up and curtailed that trail of thought, since it was after all just a little bit sad. Instead he contorted his six foot three frame around the pictures of people grinning happily in their tents and hiking gear and slid back onto the shop floor. There were no customers in the shop. CJ gave a small smirk of satisfaction; customers were undeniably the very worst part of working in a shop. Only the previous afternoon a tracksuit-clad Ned# had asked him if the pair of hiking boots that he was waving in CJ's face came with shoelaces. CJ had grinned, suppressed the urge to shoot the fucking Ned in the face with a staple gun, and had said that of course they came with shoelaces sir, indeed in this modern era some even come with soles.

The Ned had looked bewildered for a second, then left, obviously looking for someone to steal a mobile phone from, or maybe a teenage lady Ned to impregnate.

Chris smiled at the memory. That particular customer had in fact been rather entertaining when compared to seventy-five percent of the Millets clientele. That seventy-five percent were sadly people who were actually interested in outdoor pursuits and frequently had an encyclopaedic knowledge of every last blasted detail of them. Whenever he was interrogated by one of these hardy looking individuals – all of whom had the bottoms of their sensible trousers tucked into thick woolly socks – CJ was struck by an irresistible desire to run down to the docks and swim to Norway. His vocabulary in relation to outdoor pursuits stretched to boots, tents, rucksacks, waterproofs and – if pushed – groundsheets.

He hated this job, and usually this wasn't a problem. He'd hated jobs before, and had quit all of them, once after precisely four and half minutes spent in a busy restaurant up to his armpits in dirty plates. He'd quit jobs with absolutely no notice for the very slightest of reasons, usually to due to friction with a boss or unsociable hours. His CV, when he was required to write it down, took up two and half sides of A4 filled with dense, tiny writing. He had, in approximately four years of working life, been variously a cleaner, a barman, a handyman, a prison officer, a chef, a bouncer, a salesman for Vodafone, a waiter, a telesales operator and the man who collected all the 'personal waste' from the special bins in ladies toilets. All this had left him with was a varied collection of different coloured payslips and an aversion to strawberry lollies. But he had never had a problem with it, until now.

The first reason was that he was, more or less, flat broke. Horribly overdrawn, owing the Student Loan Company a years worth of student loan, and with bills to pay now he lived in his own house rather than the relative luxury of student accommodation, he'd simply had to take the first thing he could get, and the job of 'Sales Assistant' at the Aberdeen branch of Millets Outdoor Stores Limited had been the first thing he could get. So he'd taken it. And the pay was very welcome, thank you, and in six months the pay would be significantly more since his minimum wage was going to go up.

The second reason was three hundred miles away and approximately two hundred and thirty feet higher up above sea level. It was called Jenni and, after much thought on his part and rather more persuasion on hers, was causing him, apparently to grow up. It had taken twenty years and six months but here it was: maturity. He had a long term plan for the first time in his life, basically it was 1) Earn money to pay off debts, 2) Get back into University and actually _turn up to lectures_ this time and 3) Graduate, get a real job, get a Career (capital C, very important there, CJ thought) make some money and proceed through life like a normal person.

He hadn't wanted to even begin this plan, but after a while he thought that twenty and a half years was long enough to act like a prat, so he had gone to the job centre, asked the nice people there for employment anywhere within the Northern Hemisphere and had been shown this joint. Millets. And despite the itching sensation he got between his shoulder blades whenever he remembered he was embarking on a Plan he had been here all of a fortnight, and so far had not quit or been fired. He was quite proud of himself. He hated his job, but he was still here. At which point he groaned inwardly as he realised that he had actually thought that and seemingly meant it.

He kicked the side of the display tent. This made him feel better. He had discovered the previous week that kicking various items of outdoor gear was incredibly cathartic and now did it whenever the job pissed him off, which was constantly. He just had to remember not to kick anything to hard, because if he broke it then it was coming out of his wages, basically. And stuff in here was so expensive he was surprised not to see customers' credit cards making a break for the door in fear.

At which point he happened to glance sideways out the window and saw the huge grey clouds crowding the skies above the Granite City. They looked ominously like the kind of clouds that would pour shit weather down on Aberdeen. As he watched the first drops of rain splatted against the floor to ceiling windows. He cursed, not only would this draw people to Millets in their droves fro new cold weather gear, but he'd only brought his worn denim jacket with him to work this morning, given that it had been very nice for eight o'clock on a November Wednesday when he had left the house.

This, he guessed, moving his window and craning his neck to look at the sky, was the beginning of this cold winter the Met Office had mentioned back in July. It was time, he reflected, to get the woolly hat out of storage when he got back home. Then he forgot about, and put on his best winning smile as a customer came into the shop. CJ looked at their feet. The customer's trousers were tucked into his socks. CJ's winning smile got bigger.

_#Ned. Noun. Abbreviation of No Education Delinquent or Non Educated Delinquent in the patios of the streets of Scotland. Generally a term used to refer to the lowest form of human life. Also know in the UK as Scallie, Townie or Southerner. Really. For non – UK residents try it on anyone wearing a tracksuit or hoody next time you come to this great country._


	4. Chaos

Another chapter! Wow! Hope you people are appreciatin' this. And apparently, according to this fancy new hit-o-meter, you are. That's nice, truly it is but UNLESS YOU TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK I CAN'T CORRECT ANYTHING YOU MAY NOT LIKE! So may I suggest in future you read this story and then… REVIEW IT!

Thank you.

Meanwhile, special thanks to Kai for a) reviewing twice and b) giving me a kick up the arse and encouraging me to post this here new chapter.

Cheers!

PS www.joinme.info

Aberdeen, Scotland, November 2004 

It was two hours later in Millets, and it had been raining for ninety of those minutes. And in those ninety minutes a hundred and twenty millimetres of rain had fallen on the already miserably grey streets of Aberdeen. And unknown to everyone in the country at this moment that was the wettest ninety minutes on record in the United Kingdom. Ever.

CJ hadn't noticed this record-breaking fall, because in two hours he had been forcefully interrogated by the King of Outdoorsmen. CJ had never been so scared in his life. The last one hundred and twenty minutes were all a blur of words and phrases that may have well have been in Klingon for all he understood them. Apparently the customer had been initially upset by CJ's lack of knowledge concerning all things Outdoors and had launched into a brutal questioning session that made the Gestapo seem like the Girl Guides.

So at first as CJ ushered the customer out of the front door (all he had come in for was new shoelaces) his brain failed to register the torrent of dark blue rain that tumbled in incessant waves from a sky obscured utterly by the walls of descending water.

He was only at the open door for a few seconds, and the whole of the front of both his shirt and trousers were soaked through by the freezing rain. He gave a wail of dismay before retreating back into the shop and behind the counter where a small electric heater pumped two wholesome bars of heat into the shop.

"Argh shit!" he cried, amusing the only other person on the shop floor, fellow Mancunian, co-worker and the object of Chris' affections – when he wasn't depressed – Donna Phillips.

"A little bit of rain shouldn't bother someone from God's County," she said, a smile spreading on her face.

"Mancunian rain I can cope with," CJ replied. "Freezing cold, driving Scottish rain however I cannot cope with." On that note he squatted down to the heater, tugging at his shirt to take advantage of the two bars of sweet heat, filling the shop with the smell of damp cotton as he did so.

"Lovely," Donna said, turning her nose up as the odour of damp rot spread all around.

"Spray some of that mozzie repellent around if the smell bothers you," CJ suggested, further contorting himself to get more heat.

Without answering Donna moved over to the camping supplies section, cracked open the seal of a bottle of Expedition 50+ and proceeded to more or less saturate the shop with the cloying stink of insect repellent.

"You can pay for that one," she told CJ, placing the empty bottle on the floor next to him.

"Well I would but I'm chalking this one down to defective stock." He picked up the bottle, and without pausing dashed out once again into the rain, dropping the 'defective stock' in a public bin that warned him of the cost of littering. And as he turned back t the shop with a satisfied smirk on his face he happened to glance up the street, saw what was barrelling towards him and ran back into the store like a burning man seeking water.

As he fell through the door, Donna had time to once again look amused at CJ's discomfort and ask "What now?" before an unearthly sound rolled in from the busy street and down her spine.

"What the fuck is that?" she asked. Before CJ could reply, her question was answered as she finally saw what was happening on Union Street.

Animals. Hundreds, maybe thousands of them. Dogs and cats, foxes, rats by the dozen careering down the pavement, howling and squawking as if the very devils of hell were after them. Her jaw dropping slowly in astonishment, Donna moved over to join CJ at the door, and she peered past him to look up the length of Union Street, all of them pounding as near southwards as the angle of the street allowed. As she looked a blue Fiat swerved to avoid a knot of cats that were coming straight down the centre of the road, skidded on the shining wet tarmac and drove at full speed into the KFC across the street. Panicked pedestrians dashed two and fro, stumbling over the frantic animals that shot blindly beneath their feet. Donna was nearly knocked over by two Neds that pushed past her into the shop. As she recovered her balance she watched as an elderly Volvo estate lost traction attempting to avoid a ginger cat that dashed suddenly into its path and slide sideways into a traffic light, where is was hit instantly by a motorbike travelling at the better part of fifty miles an hour. Her eyes widened as the rider sailed through the air and bowled five people's feet from under them.

A further knot of pedestrians, perhaps twelve people, now ran in panic for Millets, causing CJ to grab Donna's arm and yank her out of the way as the hysterical mob charged the door. An elderly man fell to the pavement as a dozen people tried to crush through a space designed for one. The man's wails were drowned beneath pounding feet and the sounds of disaster coming from the city as yet another car lost control and blasted into the Halifax building society next door. Shards of glass spilled out onto the street as the floor to ceiling windows collapsed. The impact knocked CJ and Donna to the ground, and for a brief moment the pair of them were struck by the fear flooding Aberdeen, as the noise and the pounding feet and huge enormous cars swarmed all around them.

The sounds of glass shattering and steel twisting and masonry falling and animals howling and pedestrians screaming filled the air, smothering the sounds of the storm that was still drowning Aberdeen. Louder and louder the cacophony of sound grew, until it became one unidentifiable mass and instead seemed to fill the whole world. CJ held his breath and waited for the sky to fall on his head…

Then, just like that, it went quiet. The barrage of noise vanished and for a few seconds the only noise was the sullen sound of the rain pouring from the deep blue sky. CJ sat up and looked around cautiously. The stampeding animals had gone, and all around him people were getting to their feet, coming to their senses and peering around at what a few minutes ago had been a busy street and now was the next best thing to a war zone.


	5. The Beginning

Two chapters in quick succession! Wow! I'd make this wee intro sound smug but to be honest I'm humbly making up for not adding new chapters for months at a time. Hope y'all appreciated last chapter's shift from character development to panic on the streets of Aberdeen.

Big hello to Kai, whoever you are. Thank you lots for reviewing and in future if there is something you do not understand email me because believe me I have enough time to answer any questions. For all you other people who I know are reading this tale of disaster FOR GOD'S SAKE REVIEW! It takes just a minute of your time and is incredibly valuable for all authors, not just me. But anyway, reviews or not I will keep writing, since I have the story more or less mapped out.

Just y'all keep reading and reviewing, or at least start reviewing.

Cheers!

PS www.joinme.info

**Aberdeen, Scotland, November 2004**

"Thank you, see you later," Chris said to the back of a smart businessman. He didn't mean it, of course. Like all retail personnel he hated customers, without doubt the very worst part of this line of work. Not even the shitty money or the crappy hours were worse than damned customers. To a man they were stupid, rude and annoying. If it weren't for the fact that the manager would fire him he would have no problem emptying the boiling contents of the tea machine over the head of every single bastard customer that pissed him off, which is to say all of them.

"Cheer up it might never happen," said a voice from behind him. Chris turned to find he was looking at thin air. Then he remembered who he was talking to and lowered his gaze.

"Hi, Kathy," he said.

"Hi, yourself," came the tart reply. "Have you _seen_ the weather outside?"

"No."

"Well, guess what. It's raining."

Chris looked up his co-worker up and down, or rather down and further down, and conceded that yes, she did look soaked through.

As Kathy shrugged off her coat she kept talking to Chris in a conversational manner.

"I think there's some sort of riot up on Union Street," she chattered away as Chris glanced round the serving area to make sure there was no obvious dirt, mould or vermin to put the customers off.

"Oh?" Chris said, successfully disguising the fact he hadn't really been listening.

"Yeah," Kathy replied, tying up her apron strings as she wandered back into the serving area. "Big bangs and yelling and sirens and everything."

"Yeah?"

"Guess you dodged a bullet there then."

"Mm."

"Your hair is on fire."

"Mm… what?"

"Nice to see you're staying alert," Kathy said with a grin. "Now, how's business been?"

"Dead."

"Good, good." A pause, as she drew in a deep breath, mockingly getting ready for a busy shift. "Okay, I'll take over here and you can go give all the tables a wipe."

"Right." He whipped out a cloth from the sink, and with a considerable lack of enthusiasm began clearing the Formica table of tea stains and various light dustings of sugar and breadcrumbs. As he did so on the edge of hearing he could make out the sound of a barrage of sirens. But there was no way he could find out what was happening, he was stuck in this place until his break, still two hours away.

God he was bored. Part of him kind of wished that the Rangers fans were in town again. Last time that had happened the police had come round to warn them to be wary of the blue-shirted thugs that would pour off the trains just a few yards away at midday, then go to Pittodrie, watch the match versus Aberdeen, get drunk causing chaos throughout the city, then arrive drunk and disorderly at about nine o'clock leaving behind a wake of beer and broken noses. That day had been quite exciting, even the manager had emerged from his self-imposed exile in his office. So yes it had made the walk back home a little hairy and the police had been an almost permanent fixture in the pub that adjoined his café, dragging out drunken violent headcases at regular intervals.

Suddenly there was a tremendous roll of thunder that crashed over even the everyday cacophony of the railway station. At the same time the lights flickered, causing everyone in the café (Chris, Kathy and the businessman) to look up momentarily.

"Ooooh spooky," Kathy moaned theatrically.

_I have to walk home in this_ Chris thought miserably. At ten o'clock at night, in November, in the north of Scotland, in the driving rain. If he got home tonight and he wasn't terminally sick he was going to consider himself very lucky indeed. Well, that was six or so hours from now. For now he could just miserably think about it. He could worry about it when it was time to leave.

He hated this job. He hated any sort of job, but what was the alternative? Lie in bed at home in the dark with the gloomiest music he could think of filling him with even more misery. And then having to listen to CJ and his intolerably cheerful Irish drinking music. It was odd, he reflected. CJ was in more or less the same situation as he was yet he still remained infuriatingly cheerful. Damn that was annoying. Well at least CJ wasn't just hanging around the house anymore, something that was beginning to cause friction between the three housemates, especially with Ali, the only one of the trio who was actually going to University. At least now with himself and CJ working, they could begin to patch up the cracks that were appearing in the tenancy.

"Hey Chris," Kathy called across the café. "Stop moping and go check the toilets!" Without replying Chris turned on his heel and ambled across to the Gents. He pushed open the door, had a quick look around and saw that the floor was clean enough. He went into the toilets, pushed open all the cubicle doors, made sure everything was clean there, and then satisfied he had done his duty, signed the check sheet hung up on the wall. Thirty seconds was long enough, he decided, casting his eye over the sinks to make sure they weren't growing penicillin or anything. On that note he left, failing to note the cold grey water seeping up through the drainage grate in the floor…


	6. The Captain

Right, now you may wonder why this is going off on a funny angle, and you are right to. But I'm staying schtum, you're all going to have to keep on with the reading and the reviewing.

Now, a little pointer. To Hell-In-My-Life (interesting name there, I recommend getting drunk more), although you are technically correct in that an ice age is probably going to begin in a summer, I am sticking to the timeline of both the film and novelization of 'The Day After Tomorrow'. Although not actually referenced in the film there are two references to the date in Whitley Streiber's novelization. In the scene in Delhi there is the following line

"_What he was finding was worrying him. It was worrying him a lot. And this snow – sure it was November, but this was New Delhi for God's sake."_

And in the following chapter is this line from Jack's return to Washington

"_It was hot as hell right here at home in Alexandria. Thanksgiving was just weeks away, and it felt like August."_

Now unless I am terribly mistaken Thanksgiving falls on the 24th of November. Therefore the timeframe of TDAT takes place – or at least begins – in the month of November, and therefore so does my story. Sorry to spend so much time on something like this but I don't want anyone to be confused or to think I'm an idiot.

Cheers!

PS www.joinme.info

**_R.R.S. James Clark Ross_, Aberdeen, Scotland, November 2004**

Captain Daniel Marvin, master of the _RRS James Clark Ross_, stared down at the telephone on his elegantly curved desk as if the news it had delivered was somehow its fault. He didn't know what to think or say, so instead he looked around his tidy cabin with its neutral tones and its floral-pattern soft furnishings and thought of his drinks cabinet.

_What a good idea_, he concluded. He pushed his chair back from the desk, got up and pulled a picture of the ship's namesake – Admiral Sir James Clark Ross R.N., discoverer of the North Magnetic Pole – and then yanked open the safe hidden behind it. Inside was twenty-five thousand pounds in well-thumbed twenties and fifties, a picture of his late wife Daisy, and a bottle of Stolichnaya vodka and a tumbler. He ignored the money and the picture – they didn't really mean much to him these days – and retrieved the bottle and the glass.

He looked up at the wall-mounted clock as he sat down and unscrewed the bottle. Five-fifty in the afternoon was really quite late for him to be starting these days. Sometimes he wondered how his superiors at the British Antarctic Survey had never cottoned on to his rampant alcoholism – that's what it was, he was far too intelligent to deny it. Then as the vodka tumbled like liquid crystal into the glass he remembered what had caused him to get his hated bottle out and he forgot all about the suits who were running the B.A.S. now.

His entire medical team, dead. Wiped out in a single accident on shore leave. The details the policeman on the phone had given him were somewhat sketchy, something to do with animals, which Marvin would have dismissed as crap had it not been a copper telling him, and then something else about driving into a building? He couldn't really remember, since a fog had drifted through his mind at that point and for him the rest of the conversation was a blur. There may have been some further exchanges about notifying the next of kin…

He gave a small groan. He couldn't remember who was going to notify the families of one doctor from Cambridge and two orderlies from Preston and Crewe. In a panic he took a slug of the vodka straight from the bottle and felt his mind concentrate wonderfully. Yes, the policeman was going to make the necessary arrangements for the individual families, and he was supposed to send them all letters of condolence along with the B.A.S.

_Oh thank God_, he sighed, feeling his body relax as the booze hit him. Then, instantly on its tail came the guilty surge as he realised that this was not the way the master of a ship of her Majesty's Government was supposed to be acting. He picked up the glass and drowned that thought as well.

It suddenly struck him how incredibly unlucky his deceased crewmembers had been. Firstly, the _James Clark Ross_ would ordinarily never be in Aberdeen. They were only here to pick up some specialist oil surveying equipment, a new sonar system that could scan the ocean floor for the distinct rock formations that were the telltale signs of oil deep beneath the seabed. It was brand new, cutting-edge technology derived from some incredible discoveries by British scientists and they were to be the first to test it in the field. That's why they were here, since it had been deemed by the powers that be it was far more efficient and –more importantly – cheaper to install the sonar in Aberdeen than drag the whole shooting match, all several dozen tonnes of it, down to the _Ross' _homeport of Southampton. They had never done this before. And now they had. And now his entire medical staff was dead. The one and only time, ever, that the ship had come to Aberdeen and look what had happened.

It was enough to drive a man to drink. And it probably would, if it wasn't four years too late. At this moment he felt every one of his forty-three years. All that time of those long days and nights on the high seas, working his way up to his current post, had left his body physically fit, yes, but riddled with aches and pains and broken bones. And the drinking wasn't helping much either.

The name Daisy floated across his consciousness briefly before drowning once more in the jumbled fog of his mind.

Well, they couldn't sail without a medical team, those were the rules. He had to notify head office, and they would probably send up one of the team from the _Ernest Shackleton_, the _Ross' _sister ship that was currently in Southampton for a major refit. They wouldn't be putting to sea for at least three months, maybe more, which was plenty of time for HQ to find some replacements. In the meantime the _Ross_ would make do with the _Shack's _doctor and whatever first aid their own crew knew, which was fairly substantial.

_Well then, time to put the call in._ He put the vodka back in the safe, locked it tight and hung the picture back over it. He wasn't going to call the office with booze on his desk, some remnants of his pride was _not_ going to making telephone calls to important individuals with the tools of his alcoholism on rampant display.

He was beginning to type in the number for the B.A.S. HQ when he was interrupted by an excruciatingly polite knock on his cabin door. He replaced the handset in the cradle with a sigh.

"Come in," he called, quickly breathing into his cupped hands to check his breath for the smell of vodka. It was there, but he could hide it provided nobody tried to bite his nose off or something. His expression betrayed a brief sign of relief as a head mounted by a top of straggly brown hair shoved itself around the door.

"Skipper? You got a minute?" Tony Willis, ship's head of meteorology and permanent blur of awkward energy, asked awkwardly.

"I'm kind of busy Tony," Marvin replied, picking up the phone again.

"This is um, really important skipper."

"Okay what is it?"

"I really think you need to see, what th-the newest satellite shots from the Met Office."

"Can't this wait? I've got a big enough problem as it is. Doc, Ray and Marie have all been killed in a car crash and I don't have time to look at pictures of the weather!"

Without replying and with uncharacteristic fortitude, Willis strode straight across the office and dropped a stack of satellite photos on Daniel's desk. The captain was about to chew out the weatherman for his impudence when the images before him actually registered in his brain.

"Holy shit," he breathed, trying to regain some of his captainly dignity.

"It should be here inside of three days," said Willis, all trace of his nervous stutter gone as he forecasted the end of the world.


	7. Falling Into Darkness

Hello! Here is a new chapter where for the very first time we can read about the natural disasters that are beginning to affect the rest of our fragile little planet yada yada yada. More exciting action sequences will be coming to this spot ve-e-e-e-e-e-e-ry soon, so until then keep reading, 'cos things is about to get exciting.

On a slightly more bitter note on my part, I have to say I'm kind of pissed off at all those people who are reading this tale but not reviewing. Why is this? It only takes up no more than a few minutes of your time – even for those still using the ol' dial-up. C'mon, the whole idea of Fanfiction is that is supposes to be a community effort and frankly this wall of silence I face every time a chapter goes up is really starting to get on my pecs. So please, if you read, REVIEW, its only common courtesy and it'll make this story that much better.

Cheers!

P.S. www.joinme.info

**Aberdeen, Scotland, November 2004**

Chris finally stumbled into the warmth of his house at twenty to eleven that night. He was, in a word, freezing. Soaked to the skin thanks to the driving Scottish rain, he had convinced himself on the thirty minutes walk home that he had contracted pneumonia and that his flatmates had better start ringing around the local undertakers because they would be burying him pretty soon. He shook his hair free of water and tramped noisily into the living room. For a second his was forced into immobility by the wall of heat that hit him square in the face. He closed his eyes to savour it, and then dumped his rucksack on the carpet, where it landed with an audible squish. It was only then that his brain actually got into gear and he blinked with surprise.

"Hi Donna," he said. "Didn't expect you over tonight." And this was true. His girlfriend never came round to the house when he pulled the late shift. They had established earlier on that he'd rather just keel over after working until ten or eleven at night. Then he saw the one half empty bottle of Jack Daniels and the one totally empty bottle of Smirnoff that decorated the coffee table.

At that moment CJ stumbled in from the kitchen. Chris put two and two together; "Okay, what's the occasion?" he asked.

"We are celebrating our miraculous escape from certain death," replied CJ, after taking a second to correct the alarming slant his body had developed.

Chris didn't believe him of course.

"And the _cray_-ziest weather in history," CJ finished with a drunken flourish.

Chris didn't believe that either, and he obviously radiated a healthy amount of scepticism, since CJ was still able to pick it up through a thick haze of alcohol.

"Seriously man, watch the telly."

Chris instead slumped down next to Donna.

"Hello, lover," she said happily, with a wide drunken grin.

"Hello. How are you?"

"Well earlier on I was stressed but now I'm just dandy."

"Why were you stressed, hmm?"

"I'd tell you but I'm just too sleepy right now." To emphasise this, Donna let her head go limp and rest on Chris' shoulder.

"Hey! Hey!" CJ shouted, successfully gaining Chris' attention. "You gotta watch all this!" Chris looked at the TV in annoyance. He was about to snap at his drunken flatmate when the images on the screen shut him up decisively.

"Where is this?" he asked in wonder.

"Tokyo," a drunken grin. "It's a mess ain't it?"

Mess, Chris thought to himself, wasn't the half of it. If this truly was Tokyo, then it had been devastated beyond imagining. The skeletons of skyscrapers were all that remained above a huge inland sea. He'd never seen anything like it. It was if all those immense structures had had their outer layers simply stripped clean away. But surely there would be shorter buildings visible. Instead all he could see instead of streets was a huge lake of standing water, grey and whipped by an idle wind

"What happened?"

"They called it Supertyphoon Max," CJ replied in a tone that told the world he wasn't as drunk as he made out to be. "Hit the Japanese home islands this morning. Its huge, someone on the news was talking about a million dead."

Chris felt a chill wash over him. His nerve ends tingled and he looked for reassurance at Donna, who had slipped into sleep on his shoulder. He tried to take some comfort from her sleeping form.

"That's nothing," CJ went on. "In one day there's been that, Hurricane Noelani flattened the Hawaiian Islands, don't know much from there yet, nobody's got to it yet, and another typhoon hitting the south-east coast of Australia. Sydney's been hit hard, you oughta see the pictu – oh here. Watch."

Now on the screen was a sight that made Chris' jaw fall open in shock. Sydney Harbour Bridge, or what was left of it, bent and twisted like a broken toy. The sight of it overwhelmed him, a landmark he knew all to well just destroyed. He saw here the same kind of thing he'd seen in Tokyo, the vast sheets of water where normally there would be streets and roads. The camera was obviously mounted on a helicopter and what he saw next would remain with him forever.

The Sydney Opera House, possibly one of the most distinctive buildings on the planet. The sight of that soaring pristine white roof, the unmistakable symbol of Sydney, was something everyone in the world knew by heart, and now it was no more. All that remained of that eye-catching structure was a frenzied mass of steel punctuated by the odd piece of still-white tiling. The only thing he could liken the experience to was watching the news on 9/11, it was the knowledge that a landmark that had existed in his universe as an imperturbable piece of the landscape was gone forever.

"Hell of a day," CJ said, putting his bare feet up on the thick glass top of the coffee table.

"I can't believe it." On the TV now were more pictures of a devastated Sydney, row upon row of buildings stripped of roofs, the skyscrapers of downtown Sydney exposed to their steel frameworks.

"Apparently now they're getting a shitload of snow. New Zealand is under five feet of the stuff, and its supposed to be summer down there. I dunno, makes a warm autumn seem almost normal." CJ was referring to the weather of the past three weeks, which had seen record high temperatures across the whole of Northern Europe. Not just mild autumn weather, either. The past three weeks in Aberdeen, for instance, had seen temperatures that had rivalled the past summer.

Chris nodded in response, and tried and failed to be less worried. Then gently, so as not to wake Donna, he leaned forward and poured a generous measure of the JD into a glass.

"So why is Donna round here then?" he asked, wishing he didn't sound so damn nosy like he knew he just had done.

"Didn't you hear?"

"Obviously I didn't or I wouldn't be asking."

"It was the weirdest thing," CJ said, and the thought of it compelled him to pour a generous measure of JD for himself. "'Bout four o'clock this afternoon there was a fucking _stampede _of animals all across the city. Thousands of the bastards, all running one way." He took a heavy gulp of the whisky, and let out a small laugh through his nose. "_Away_. Guess they all know something we don't."

Chris agreed with a tiny nod, and let his gaze fall back to the screen. His eyes absorbed the images of two devastated nations, and it was all he could do to stop the ice filling his veins as the whisky burned in his throat. He remembered with growing unease the pictures of the North Pole, free of ice for the first time in half a million years. Of the images of snow in New Delhi, then more recently the unusual weather he had experienced in this very city, and now this. This insanity gripping the world's weather. Just what the hell was going on?


	8. Three Days

Harro! Sputnik here with yet another chapter – boy I sure am being nice with all these new chapters in quick succession. I've decided not to bitch about nobody reviewing 'cos it doesn't seem to make a whole lot of difference either way. I suppose I will just be selfless and write so you can read at your leisure. I can cope without reviews.

Actually I can't but lets pretend I can since I'm beginning to sound like an old Tory fart in the letters page of the Times (for my American readership, for Tory read Republican). Anyway, very soon a giant storm surge will be making a mess of Aberdeen and then the really good bits will be getting under way. This chapter however, contains vital exposition and some dramatic dialogue, and introduces some more characters that you just know are destined to croak by the end of the story.

Also, much thanks to bAnDgEeK75 who is doing her level best to spread the word. Frankly without you my review count would be too depressing for words, so an extra special cheers for you. In fact, everyone in my local will raise a pint to you for a really big cheers.

Cheers! (that's for bAnDgEeK75)

Cheers! (that's for the rest of you)

PS www.joinme.info

**_R.R.S. James Clark Ross_, Aberdeen, Scotland, November 2004**

It was four thirty in the morning, Captain Marvin reflected in the comforting golden glow of the Conference Room. He was exhausted. In fact he had barely stopped moving in the ten or so hours since Tony Willis had dropped his bombshell that had condemned his country to death. Those ten hours had also given him time for his temper to die down.

_The fucking Met Office had had those images for a week!_

A week! A Goddamned week in which the _Ross_ could have instigated a crash course of maintenance work and been steaming southwards just as fast as the engines could push her. But instead for some insane reason the Met had kept it to themselves, and now, barring a miracle, they were going to be caught right in the middle of the damn thing.

_The Storm._

It was huge. A cyclonic system the size of a continent, growing above the Artic Circle. And under that mass of cloud were hundred mile-an-hour winds and killer blizzards. It looked like a truly monstrous hurricane; surely those already under it were experiencing death in incalculable numbers even as he gazed at the Doppler printout. And it was undoubtedly getting bigger, and it was undoubtedly heading this way.

How he wished for a drink right now. But there were other people around him at this meeting, and as he well knew one drink was too many, and two drinks weren't enough when he was in company. So instead he just dreamed of alcohol, then decided it was time to call this meeting to order. He ran one hand through his short greying hair, cleared his throat and began to speak.

"Okay, gentlemen. It's time we figured out how we're going to deal with this."

His senior staff had all had a good look at the images, and they had also seen the news pictures from Japan and Australia. Tony Willis had filled them in further on what had actually happened – as far as he knew anyway. Supertyphoon Max, which had devastated a Japan still reeling from a devastating hailstorm a few days before. Typhoon Lena, which had flattened South Eastern Australia. Hurricane Noelani, a truly unprecedented storm which had devastated the Hawaiian Islands, from which there was still no word on damage or casualties. So far it was estimated that in this one day two million people had died in the Pacific. But, Willis had said, this was nothing compared to what was coming over the horizon. The weatherman had fairly terrified the senior staff, but it was out of his job description to tell them what to do, other than that they could _not_ be caught beneath that storm if they wished to live.

The problem was, half of the crew were not on board. In fact most of them weren't even in Scotland. Normally his Senior Staff consisted of eight, himself, First Officer Rick McFarland, Second Officer John Orton, Third Officer William Joyce and Chief Engineer Roddy McIntyre. They represented the crew. For the science team, there was Chief Scientist Professor Norman Talbot, his assistant Dr. Geoffrey Cook, Head of Meteorology Tony Willis and Head of Hydrology and Oceanography Dr. Stephen Wallace. On this long night, all he had was Joyce, McIntyre, Dr. Talbot and Tony Willis. All the others were at their homes on the South Coast, none of them due back for another ten days

_And anyway,_ Marvin thought to himself, _they're probably safer down there than we are up here._ But those men and women who were not on the ship were there because it was their turn for shore leave. Those left behind, he knew, had families in the path of the storm, and would no doubt want to get them out of the country. But he knew, and they knew, that there was no chance of getting away from the coming storm except by on this ship.

The B.A.S. was another consideration. They wanted the _James Clark Ross_ intact. If this storm was going to be as devastating to the climate as everyone feared, the people of earth would need the equipment they had on board to chart the strange new world they were all going to find themselves in.

"We can't have this ship ready in time." This was McIntyre, the Chief Engineer. He'd only got into Aberdeen three hours ago, having been on a fishing trip with his brother and Professor Talbot just up the coast at Elgin. Marvin didn't want to think of their trip back to Aberdeen once the recall had gone out, going at full speed through seas that were already becoming very nasty indeed.

"That's not an option, Roddy." Marvin had very little patience with his engineering chief, he considered him far too outspoken and disrespectful of authority.

"Well don't blame me. The new sonar has not been fully integrated yet. I've been liasing with the dockyard foreman and the fastest he can get it all tied in to our systems and have the hull patched up is ten days."

"In ten days we will all be dead," Willis chipped in, causing the captain to once again marvel at his you weatherman's polar shift in personality since all this had begun.

"Look," Talbot tried, his voiced laced with strained reasoning. "Are you sure about this? How do we know this isn't simply an unusually powerful storm? I mean we've ridden these things out before, why can't we just batten down the hatches and wait for all this to blow over?"

"I don't know if you've noticed Norman, but this storm is like nothing we have ever seen before. Its not merely unusual, its unprecedented in recorded history, and staying under it will mean we all freeze to death." Willis was beginning to go red in the face, and Marvin knew that he was right.

"We have three days," Daniel began. "After that nobody's safety is guaranteed. Can we be away in three days, Roddy?"

"Yes we can, but then that nifty three million pound sonar will almost certainly be wrecked, and I don't think the nice people at B.P. who paid for it are going to be very pleased."

"If this storm is as bad as Tony says it is they I don't really think it's going to matter."

"Then it's just a case of sealing the hull back up and then we can be off."

"What about our families?" asked William Joyce, his voice barely more than a pained whisper. Marvin knew that he had a wife and three daughters at his home in Birmingham. He knew also that Roddy and Norman had their own families too. And he knew that what he was going to say next would probably haunt him for the rest of his life.

"Head Office has arranged transport for all our families to shelter on the continent. Spain, I think." _There, that lie wasn't so hard_. Head Office had actually told him to save the _Ross_ at all costs, and then fed him that line to give to his crew. He knew that without every man and woman left on board putting all hands to the pumps, then the _Ross_ was going nowhere. He swallowed, wishing for some of the powerful flavour of vodka to wash away the guilt from his stomach. He stood up, decisively.

"Okay gents, we have three days, get it done."


	9. Here It Comes

Aloha! Sputnik here with yet another chapter of the fine story for all you equally fine people to read. Luckily for you, I don't have anything to bitch about so this intro will be quite short (Hooray!)

Oh, hang on, here is an email from I sent to everyone on my 'Odyssey' mailing list (currently two individuals but just email me at if you want in), which isn't really a bitch, just a question. Ideally I would like an answer from you _fine_ people by either emailing the above address or as part of a review on the review page.

I have noticed on the stats page for 'Odyssey' that there is a significant drop-off of readership from Chapter 1 ('Prologue, Mauritius 2057' currently 124 hits) and Chapter 2 ('Chris' 65 hits). I have decided that this is down to the content of the Chapter 1, which has little to do with the rest of the story, is causing people to dismiss the rest of the story. So my question is this, should I -

1) Drop the Prologue entirely, and just go straight into the story with Chris' introduction and the birds?

2) Change the Prologue to better fit in with the storyline which will make up the bulk of 'Odyssey'?

3) Keep the Prologue as it is?

If you feel up to replying, either do so at this email address or in the reviews page. This situation is very frustrating since I want as many people as possible to R&R 'Odyssey'.

Right, thank you very much for your time and keep your eyes peeled for the next chapter, out soon.

Sputnik

There. Reply if you want to but only you can tell me if The Prologue is a great hook for the story or a great big horrible disaster.

Cheers!

P.S. www.joinme.info

**Aberdeen, Scotland, November 2004**

It was eight thirty in the evening, three days after the dramatic announcements onboard the _James Clark Ross_ and the equally dramatic animal stampede through the city, and CJ was well on his way to being totally blasted. This was his weekly Tuesday night tradition. He began by having a soak in the bath as soon as he got home from work, listening to the invigorating and honest music of Flogging Molly, or the Goth-tinged power metal of Avenged Sevenfold, and just wallowing in the bath, thinking about the two days off that were now his. Then he would get dressed in his black jeans and whatever t-shirt was clean this week, slick back his dark hair, slide on his black denim jacket and stride out into the night.

From there his path – which had been determined by ten months on nights out in Aberdeen during his first year of University – was rigidly followed. First off was Frankenstein's, to sample the delicious twelve-ounce steak and two or three pints of premium European lager. Next was a hike down half of Union Street to the sports bar Stadia, just in time for their Tuesday night happy hour, which enabled a grateful populace to buy pints of Stella Artois for one pound fifty a pint. Another – slightly more wobbly – hike took him to Drummonds Café Bar. Here he watched the open mic music night, downed another couple of pints – usually the Carling (anything but the Scottish favourite Tennants, his taste buds weren't quite devolved enough for that). Then it was off to Kef's for a shot or five of the flavoured vodkas – cherry was his favourite – and after that his destinations became more or less random and he could never really know where he was going to go until he was there.

He usually ended his evening with three stops on the trip back up Union Street, namely McDonald's, Burger King and the local fish 'n' chip shop at the bottom of his street, all visited in attempt to curb a serious attack of the munchies. All told his Tuesday blow out cost him fifty pounds and about a billion brain cells, but it was worth it. Sometimes he would meet people he knew and things would change, and sometimes the booze would go to his brain incredibly quickly and he would have to admit defeat and go home early, but that was his routine, and he had a bloody good time sticking to it.

Right now he was sat in Stadia, watching Sky Sports News on one of the big plasma TVs. There wasn't a great deal of footballing news tonight, it was just something for his eyes to try and focus on while he waited for a couple of his former University classmates to turn up. It was, he noticed, getting harder to focus on the scrolling news bar at the bottom of the screen.

Not that he was paying an awful lot of attention anyway, because today he had seen something on the telly that made the stampede of three days ago look like the cheapest B-movie special effects show.

He had gone to secondary school in York for five years. He knew it and loved it almost as much as his hometown of Manchester, and what he had seen today had been like a punch in the guts.

A tornado. A goddamned _tornado_ had ripped through the historic city of York, leaving behind a path of destruction five miles long. And it had not been the crappy pseudo-tornadoes that the UK usually saw. It had been, according to the BBC anyway, an F-3. He'd checked that on the Internet when he had got home, and an F-3 was classified as a tornado that generated 113-157 mile-an-hour winds and caused 'considerable damage'. He just couldn't shake the image of the enormous central tower of the beautiful gothic Minster, come crashing down as a huge tornado crashed into it. The images of something so devastating happening in the UK were so powerful they pushed the new images of the destruction of Sydney and the first pictures of a devastated Hawaii well down the order on the news.

He couldn't help but wonder what the hell was going on in the world. Storms of unprecedented and monstrous scale crashing around the Pacific – apparently there was another supertyphoon just like Max heading for Japan – was something that may just be a seasonal freak, unlikely, but possible. It was so far away from him that he could dismiss it far easier than he could dismiss the crazy shit that had happened to him. Mad animals stampedes? For Christ's sakes that was just insane. Then there was this constant – record-breaking according to the Met – torrential rain which had been pounding the whole of Europe for the past three days, and now this in a city he felt great affinity for. It was almost too much to take, which is why he had decided to get extra specially drunk tonight by going to club after Drummonds had shut for the night. He couldn't cope with all this craziness that he was having to deal with.

His eyes shot wide open as he realised that he hadn't rung Jenni up to see if she was okay. Although he knew logically that she was well away from the area of devastation, logic has little say when loved ones could be in danger. His hand dropped to the mobile in his inside jacket pocket, and he thumbed in her number without even having to think or even look at it, which was a good thing since he was getting to the point where there now _two_ mobile phones moving in and out of focus in his hand.

He held the phone to his ear. The dial tone could be heard instantly. This was a good thing; it meant that whatever transmitter tower Jenni's phone was nearest to was still standing. So far, so good.

But then the ringing went on, and on, and on. He began to have visions of a discarded phone ringing in the wreckage of her car or a shop she was browsing in when a killer tornado had ripped through it and wiped out the woman he loved…

"Hello, this is Jenni Marr's answer phone. I can't get to the phone right now so leave your name and number and I'll get right back to you."

CJ was about to start worrying intensely now, when all of a sudden he stopped worrying about Jenni and started worrying about himself as the electricity in the bar died without a sound. He looked around his suddenly dark surroundings. Everything was off, the lights, the TVs, even the beer pumps at the bar. A party of men out on a stag night cheered ironically, and there was excited chattering all around at the new development. He craned his head to peer out of the big windows into the street, and realised with a start that all the lights as far as he could see were also out.

In his drunken inquisitive state he staggered out onto the rain-swept streets, and peered up both ends of Union Street. All was dark, but not silent. He realised he could barely see an inch in front of his nose; so dark was the night now. There was no moon or stars; they were still hidden by the endless rain clouds.

Now some light was shed onto the road as a car pulled out of a side street, and it enabled CJ to see the hordes of people spilling out from pubs and restaurants to see for themselves the unparalleled sight of a city in total darkness.

And then something far, far stranger happened. At first he thought it was his alcohol-soaked senses playing tricks on him. Then he turned around and realised others were feeling it too. The very ground beneath their feet was rumbling, as if a small but persistent earthquake was happening below the streets of Aberdeen.

And now something new. From the docks, less than a mile away, came the sound of total destruction over the hammering of the rain.


	10. The Surge

Wassail! (That's ancient English, its another way of saying hello). Sputnik here, with yet another exciting chapter of more quality ice age disaster. In this chapter we find out that Chris is the long lost relative of Sam and is going to go rescue him…

Just kidding. I wouldn't do that to my fans with their ardent anti-Sam/Laura fluff vitriol. I hate that crap too, which won't stop me putting it into the sequel (currently in pre-production).

Just kidding again, but not about the sequel, I really do have a plan for that. Seriously, I have some good ideas which don't work in this story but could go in some action/adventure sequel.

Cheers!

P.S. www.joinme.info

**_R.R.S. James Clark Ross,_ Aberdeen, Scotland, November 2004**

Their time was up, and they knew it. Three days had passed, and the Doppler radar showed that the monster storm coming down from above the Artic Circle was now upon them. For the past three days they had been feeling the effects of the storm system for two days now, displayed in the extreme weather across northern Europe, the most spectacular of which was the tornado that had destroyed a big chunk of the city of York. They had been getting reports from Scandinavian weather services of record snowfalls, and Tony Willis had informed the crew that whatever was going on up there was heading their way.

And now it was a matter of hours away. Maybe less, and Marvin was frantic with worry. Every hand had been pressed to the patching up of the hull. The captain was vaguely aware that an awful lot of incredibly expensive equipment was going all to hell and unless the _Ross_ got away soon he and his crew would be following it. So everyone who could handle cutting and welding equipment was slaving away at the hull, while everyone else was frantically getting stores from a nearby supermarket using B.A.S. credit cards. Normally the provisions they received at Portsmouth was more than enough for their extensive trips, but now Marvin had no idea as to when the ship would be reprovisioned, so he had ordered shuttles of Transit hire vans to and from the supermarket.

So now he was on the bridge, peering out into the rain-lashed night and very close to hyperventilating. He knew that in the path of this storm was the inevitable surge and right now he was directly in the path of it. Although nobody was sure, it was being surmised that this surge was going to be _huge_. And it was going to hit them, and when that happened the crew of the _Ross_ were really going to wish they were somewhere else.

The clomping of heavy boots coming onto the bridge interrupted his train of thought. He turned around to see the sweat-streaked form of Chief Engineer McIntyre. He was dressed in a filthy boiler suit and looked utterly exhausted.

_As well he might_, Marvin reflected. McIntyre had got about four minutes sleep in the past three days, having spent the rest of time working frenetically to cram ten days worth of heavy work into the ever-closing window of escape. Often during that time he had pushed dockyard workers – who hadn't grasped the urgency of the work at all – out of the way and picked up the cutting torch or welder himself in an effort to get the job done. Twice the foreman had threatened to pull his men off the job unless McIntyre stopped hassling them, and it had taken hurried reassurances from Marvin that the B.A.S. would pay them substantial bonuses if only they would work faster. Privately Marvin thought that these men would not live to receive their money, but if he told them of the danger they were all in then he knew for a fact that this ship would be going nowhere.

"We're all done Marvin," McIntyre said, almost beyond exhaustion and in no mood for formalities. He was on the point of collapse and from what the science blokes had told him then this was only the beginning of a very long and equally exhausting period. Well, he was used to hard work and was never going to shirk a task such as this.

"Ready to go?" Marvin asked.

"The seal won't pass any safety inspections but yeah, we can go."

"Thank Christ." Marvin closed his eyes in silent thanks and felt the knots in his stomach loosen fractionally. "Right, someone ring up Will, tell him that we cast off as soon as the last of the vans unloads so for fucks sake tell him to hurry, I don't know how long we have…"

"Aye, Captain."

"Chief," Marvin said, addressing McIntyre. "Get the engines started, we have to be moving as soon as we can."

"I'm on it," McIntyre confirmed.

It happened as the engineer turned to leave. Through the driving rain nobody saw it coming, but it was there all the same. Towards the coast it came, the largest storm surge in the history of the British Isles, a thirty-foot high wall of water, caused by the pressure of the storm displacing the water and moving slowly with the unstoppable force of the ocean. There was no warning whatsoever.

The _James Clark Ross_ rose with the wave, shooting almost vertically thirty feet into the air. With no warning everyone on the bridge was knocked off the feet by the power of a billion tonnes of ocean rolling into several hundred tonnes of sea-going vessel. The lines tying the ship to the dock all snapped instantly, and Marvin's first thought was for the dockworkers dismantling the scaffolding around the hull patch. He knew by the motion of the ship that this was the dreaded storm surge, and that they had left it too late and that they were all finished. He grasped frantically at a stanchion and his jaw dropped in slack-mouthed terror.

Now the _Ross_ was helpless in the grip of the surge its stern swung round until it was broadside to the wave, and McIntyre grimaced as the sound of groaning metal rose over the sound of the storm. He knew that the ship had been carried over the edge of the dock and now the hull was crashing over and into buildings and cars and anything else on land that by now was underwater. With barely a thought he leapt to his feet and staggered desperately against the bucking motions of the deck. He knew he had to get below decks, if they were taking on water then they were all dead, he had to stop it before they were sunk.

The groaning and grinding as the huge red hull continued as the ship was carried on by the surge, and Marvin gave a wail of panic. He was sure death was but moments away.

It was the _Ross_' anchor that saved her. Initially yanked off the harbour bed it dug in like a tick into the solid walls of the dock. The ship wallowed alarmingly as the surge ground on past it, but suddenly they were stopped, the stern now wedged into the façade of a building the surge had driven it into.

Marvin opened his eyes and stared out into the storm. From all around the _James Clark Ross_ came the sounds of violent destruction as the wave came up short where the land rose sharply away from the docks but for now they were safe. But he could see where a massive dredge had been capsized, and another, possibly a trawler which had been driven bodily into the shopping centre which overlooked the harbour. His eyes widened in fear.

"We have to get out of here."


	11. The Surge ii

Guten tag! (I think that's German – I could be wrong since I never did German at any level of education). For all Germans, if I'm wrong, I apologise now.

Sorry.

Anyway, this is another chapter of this good ice age story, and in case you have forgotten, Chris works at the railway station that just so happens to be… _next to the docks!_

Cheers!

P.S. www.joinme.info

**Aberdeen, Scotland, November 2004**

_Well this isn't good_, Chris thought, watching out of the huge glass windows of the Lemon Tree café across the concourse of the railway station. What he could see disturbed him enormously. Water. Water, which had filled in the railway lines and was now lapping at the very edge of the platform. The station had been essentially shut to all trains since ten o'clock this morning but the manager of the Lemon Tree had kept them open all day, during which time Chris had mainly found himself mopping up the cold, dirty water which was backing up through the grills in the toilets.

There had been precisely two customers, and one of them had been CJ who had come in for his lunch break to get his usual mug of free tea and the opportunity to read all the newspapers other people left behind. And the other had been the old homeless guy who came in to shout at the furniture. He and Kathy had spent their time being alternatively bored by the lack of work and worried by the rising waters. They were sure it wasn't going to be long before the water spilled out from the tracks and over the platform.

Chris knew that today was the most pointless day in the history of retail sales. Quite why Dave the manager had kept them open all day was utterly beyond him. So now all he wanted to do was go home, because it was cold and miserable with all this water around and he just ached for some whisky and warm food. And his twat of a manager was making him work all the way through until ten bastard thirty at night. If he wasn't so desperate for money he would down tools and quit without a seconds hesitation.

But here he was, watching the platform and waiting for the water to roll over his feet. He supposed this all had something to do with the fact the railway station was just a few feet above sea level, along with a huge semi-circle of low-lying land around the docks. So he reckoned that the moment his feet got wet, and then he had better leave because the sea probably wouldn't be far behind.

He drummed his fingers idly on the window, while at the same time whistling Biffy Clyro's 'Bodies In Flight'. The urge to be somewhere else was almost overpowering, he could feel it as a little piece of instinctive electricity crackling through the primal animal part of his brain. For some reason his mind flashed back to the mad flight of the birds he'd seen three days ago and he shivered involuntarily. It hadn't stopped raining in three days and he was beginning to feel ill.

Suddenly Kathy burst out of the ladies toilets in a state of high agitation.

"You have to come and see this," she gasped. Chris was sufficiently startled by the urgency in her voice that he sprinted past her and ran into the toilets fast that he was unable to stop his feet skidding out from under him as he splashed into the ankle deep water that had flooded the bathroom. As he landed painfully on his backside his eyes opened wide at the sight of the porcelain toilets overflowing.

"Shit!" He tried to get to his feet, but once again he was unable to keep a firm footing and fell down, this time with his head catching a glancing blow on the corner of one of the sinks. As he hit the floor he clutched the sudden explosion of pain in his skull, and experienced a surge of panic as blood flowed from his forehead into his eyes.

He lay on his back, dimly aware that the water flowing around him was getting higher. It was almost peaceful, his stunned brain decided. It was only when the water began to run into his ears that he realised that this was a bad thing and he hauled himself upright using the sink as an aid. He discovered that even the taps and the plughole were emitting a steady stream of filthy brown water.

_Right,_ he thought sternly_, I quit._

Pressing the ball of his hand against the gash in his head he staggered out into the café. Water was ankle deep in here. He looked to his left, and saw that the whole concourse was awash. Once more the panic swelled in his chest.

"Kathy!" he shouted. "We're leaving!"

"Let me get my coat," she said sensibly, too worried to even notice the veritable river of blood pouring from Chris' head.

"No time!" he said, reaching for her with his free hand. "We're going _now_."

Kathy was quite calm now, but Chris was being fuelled by the strongest gut sensation he had ever known. He didn't know what it was or where it was coming from, all he knew was that he had to be somewhere else right away, or he would be in serious trouble.

With one hand stemming the flow of blood and the other dragging a disbelieving Kathy behind him, Chris splashed swiftly though the ankle-high water. It was only when he got to the entrance to the railway station, leading out to the deserted car park, did either of them notice that the water was in face rising. It was shin-high now, having gone up several inches in just a few minutes. Something terrible was happening, Chris knew, and the pair of them were slap bang in the middle of it.

Without really y engaging his brain he pulled Kathy out into the driving rain and together they waded across the car park and onto Guild Street with the intention of going up Virginia Street and then onto Union Street via Bridge Street. Through the storm they could see the lights of a huge red ship blaring into the night. It was, he realised, the only light for miles in every direction. Aberdeen had been suddenly plunged into darkness, and Chris and Kathy staggered on through wind-whipped water that was almost up their waists now.

It took them the better part of ten minutes to wade the quarter of a mile to Bridge Street, and by the time they got arrived they were utterly exhausted by a draining mixture of exertion and freezing cold. Now it was just a few hundred yards uphill and they would be amongst the clubs and pubs of Union Street, and from there a taxi out of this hell.

It was they started up the slope that they heard it. Kathy tugged Chris' arm hard as a deep base rumble rose up from behind them. Both of them wheeled round in the water and gasped at what they saw.

The lights of the ship they had seen earlier were rising into the air as picked up by the hand of some angry god. This incredible sight was then topped by a scene from the end of the world; a wall of water, easily thirty feet high, bearing down them with the unstoppable motion of an avalanche. There was a sudden piercing shriek as a huge dockyard crane was torn from its foundations and began the inevitable slow-motion collapse to earth.

Chris didn't even think about running. He just did it. He had to be above the level of that wave and he had but a brief span of seconds to do it. With pounding legs and burning lungs he hauled himself up the pitch black, pavement, away from the water of death which he knew was just poised to crash down upon him.

It was only after he was two thirds of the way to safety that the word _Kathy_ flashed across his mind. Instinctively he turned to make sure she was still following him and was instantly blown off his feet as the surge swept over him…

Freezing water was all around him. He didn't know which way was up or down. His right leg crashed into something with the force of a train hitting a mountain and he screamed, the remaining air in his lungs escaping in a frantic stream of bubbles. He span around again, seeing nothing put utter darkness around him. There was something in his chest, trying to burst its way out.

With a kind of sleepy peace, he decided it must be his lungs. He saw the face of Donna appear before him, and he figured that he had died…

_About time too._

Suddenly, with a feeling like a car crash, he hammered into solid asphalt. The shock of the impact caused his eyes to fly open. He was dragged along the rough surface of the road, the pain was incredible, a terrible weight was pressing onto his body, squeezing his insides with an unfathomable pressure, he wanted to scream but he had no breath with which to make a sound.

Then it was gone, the weight, the pressure. His stunned senses could not make out what was going on. All he knew was that he was motionless and utterly freezing cold. He tried raising his head, but he was overcome by a sudden rush in his throat. He hauled his battered body over to one side, and felt the burning of dirty water vomit from his mouth. It was then he realised that he was laid up on Bridge Street. The wave that had hit him had deposited him to safety.

He was safe.

And on that thought he passed out, the stern lights of a ship looming high over him.


	12. Fire And Ice

'Allo. I've run out of things to say. Other than I would _really_ like some reviews now things are getting exciting.

Oh wait! A review! And a comment to give a reply to!

Although yes it may seem that I am in fact ripping off TDAT, I am not just copying an event without solid movie basis. And a storm surge _is_ mentioned audibly in the film. It comes in the scene before the helicopter crashing part, and is mentioned by a man on the TV in the background. So yeah!

You may also notice that the heading and time format has changed. This is deliberate and signals the more focused nature of the forthcoming adventures.

Cheers!

P.S. www.joinme.info

**Aberdeen, Scotland**

**9.15 PM, November 30th 2004**

There was a bone-numbingly freezing wind blowing from the North Sea. It was like nothing CJ had ever known; even last winter in Aberdeen had had nothing on this piercing gale, and last winter had been real brass-monkey weather. And now the constant rain of the last three days had been replaced by a miserable sleet that soaked the clothing of the hundreds now milling on the darkened streets of the Granite City.

CJ currently was doing something that he probably wouldn't do if he were sober. He knew that whatever had made the huge crashing noise had happened down by the docks, and so he was going to have a look. It was still utterly dark so he switched on the torch hanging from his heavy bunch of keys. The beam it produced was pathetic, akin to a dying glow-worm or a fluorescent toy of the kind found in cereal boxes. However, it was so dark on Union Street it was better than nothing, giving just enough light to prevent him walking into a lamppost as he made his slightly unsteady way towards the docks.

A combination of the cold and his alcohol-dulled senses meant he never heard the footsteps coming up rapidly behind him.

"Hey!" said a female voice behind him, whilst simultaneously a female hand grabbed his shoulder. He jumped and span round, but his drunken brain was unable to keep him balanced and he fell heavily to the slick pavement. Luckily his nerves were sufficiently dulled that he didn't really feel it. Instead he finally reacted to the perceived threat and pointed his torch into his assailant's eyes. The figure above him was less than dazzled by the feeble shaft of light, but at that point he realised that it didn't really matter.

"Hi, Donna," he said cheerily. "Erm, little help please?" A hand was proffered and accepted.

"Have you heard from Chris?" the girl asked as she pulled CJ to his feet.

"No. He's at work isn't he?" It was at that point his mind put two and two together. Chris worked at the railway station, which was by the docks, which was where all the noise of disaster had come from. "Oh."

"Yeah," Donna replied, a trace of emotion distorting her voice.

"Have you tried ringing him?"

"My phone's on the blink."

"Okay, I'll give it a shot." He fumbled around inside his jacket pocket and produced his phone, an ancient brick of a thing, which had defied expectations and was still working. He thumbed a button, scrolled through his contacts list and hit the dial button on **Chris.**

"_You have reached the T Mobile answering machine from 077946628901. The person you are calling is currently unavailable…"_

"Shit," CJ muttered. "Switched off."

"Well," said Donna decisively, "we're going down to the station to make sure he's okay."

"Is that a good id -?" CJ began before Donna cut him off with a look that brooked no argument. It was one of those 'do as I say' looks which Jenni had perfected on him in five years of knowing each other. "Okay then, let's go. I just want you to know I think this is now officially stupid."

It was snowing now. CJ was also officially amazed; rain had turned to snow in the space of less than thirty minutes. This was more than just amazing, however. It was incredibly discouraging and even more dangerous. Only his sense of honour stopped him ditching Donna and heading back for the warmth of the house and the bottle of whatever spirit it was that was left in the fridge. So he kept walking after Donna, splashing through the standing water that had filled the road and was seeping onto the pavement.

They had just reached Millets and were just about to turn onto Bridge Street when Donna stopped dead, and CJ very nearly walked into the back of her.

"What?" he said, cold and annoyed.

"You hear that?" Donna replied, almost too faintly to be heard over the soft roar of the falling snow.

"Hear what?"

Less than half a mile in front of them the clouds parted, and the astonishing sight of a BMi 737 plough out of the sky, its wings canted at a forty degree angle, screaming over the city so low CJ could see the rivets on the belly of the plane. The mid-section landing gear tore into the building across Bridge Street with a sound like a nuclear explosion. The two students stood in the teeth of the storm, watching the top two floors of the six-story granite building crumble down onto the street. The impact sent shockwaves along the Union Street and knocked CJ and Donna to the ground.

CJ looked up from his prone position and down Union Street, following the path of the jet. It was getting ever lower, until suddenly one wing ripped into the Stadia Bar and the whole aircraft pivoted round the wing and with the apparent speed of a glacier it rolled into an office building just off the street. The darkened night was filmed with a towering orange fireball that shattered the facades of two hundred year old buildings, blasting huge chunks of granite and glass out into the street. CJ threw his hands over his head as the shockwave blew over him, the heat of burning aviation fuel rolling over him and scorching the bare skin on the back of his hands and neck.

Then suddenly, the sound of the explosion ceased. Cautiously CJ and Donna looked up, uncovering their eyes to reveal the sight of a street burning as snow and ash drifted down from the scorched sky.

"Holy fuck," CJ breathed slowly, part of his mind perversely wishing that he had his video camera with him. His eyes danced with the spires of fire, which now reached towards the heavens. He pushed himself to his feet, noting which a kind of stunned shock that the thin layer of snow he had landed in had melted with the heat pulse that had washed over everything. He shook his head clear, then helped Donna silently to her feet.

"We'd better call the fire brigade," she said carefully.

"Good idea," was CJ's equally careful reply. He could feel the roaring flames tease his eyebrows with sensuous heat. He put his hand into his pocket for his phone, but as he did so he noticed something off to his left that was odd enough to tear his attention away from the sight of Aberdeen burning, a flicker of orange light coming from inside of the Millets outdoor store. As his brain focused more on this he realised the plate glass of the front door had been kicked in. Without actually thinking about he stepped through the gaping frame of the door, not checking to see if Donna had actually noticed him leave her side.

It was dark inside, there was some light from the inferno a half-mile away but most of it was obscured by the window displays. He could make out shadows and dark shapes, but not a great deal else. Just the tiny little flicker from the very back corner of the store. CJ slid stealthily but quickly to his left, darting behind the till counter. He got down on one knee; where a bit of careful rummaging would produce…

Yes! An American police nightstick. He slid it out of its hiding place and took a solid grip on the handle. The weight and solidity of it gave him a surge of comfort, and he continued his creeping progress clockwise around the store, bringing him closer to the orange glow.

He was less than ten feet away, concealed by a display of hiking boots. He could hear now a thin little hiss. For a second he couldn't figure out what it was, and then it twigged. It was a gas-fired camping stove, probably one from the store. He peered round the edge of the shelving, his hand tensing around the nightstick, getting ready to pounce on this intruder.

He moved fast, his arm brought up.

"Holy fuck!" he cried as his eyes saw who it was hunched by the pathetic flame. "We all thought you were dead, Chris."


	13. Interception

Herro! Right, it appears I have some questions to ask. So, in order, the answers are…

# A nightstick is one of those heavy plastic batons you see coppers – sorry, _cops_ – hitting people with.

# I have always spelt the 'European way', since I am in fact European. English to be precise. Funnily enough that's the way we are taught to spell in the UK. Also now I think about it, it isn't really the European way, since nobody in Europe outside of the UK would naturally write in English to begin with, and even if they did, they would probably write in American (color, center etc). Incidentally why the hell do you call a tap a faucet? Funny story, I went to San Diego once for a holiday, and I had a problem with the tap, to whit I couldn't get any water out of it. So I shouted down to my host "I can't get any water out of the tap". To which he replied "What?" The tap, you know, the thing in the wall the water comes out of." And he went "Faucet?" Which caused me to reply in some confusion "I did force it. I tore it out of the bloody wall." There was water everywhere, a terrible mess it was…

# That little anecdote may confuse practically everyone, sorry.

# I will review both your old fic and this new fic of yours, just remember I have no idea what 'Phil of the Future' is. But I have the Internet at my fingertips so I'm sure I can find out.

Cheers!

P.S. www.joinme.info

**Aberdeen, Scotland**

**10.02 PM, November 30th 2004**

Chris and Donna sat clung together around the island of warmth and light the camping stove provided. Chris was wrapped up in several layers of warming clothing purloined from the racks of the Millets store. He had, he knew, never ever been so cold in his entire life, and it seemed that even if he was so wrapped up in thermal gear that he couldn't move it still wouldn't get rid of the deathly chill that gripped his body. So he sat there, shivering, staring mutely into the stove with Donna's arm clutched tightly around him. He had not returned the gesture. He had barely moved since CJ and Donna had found him here. Donna had looked into his eyes and had seen the same thousand yard stare her father had worn permanently since his return from the first Gulf War.

Chris knew in a distant, detached way that the events of the last hour were going to cause him sleepless nights and flashback-filled days for the rest of his life. He wasn't _really_ sure what had actually happened to him in those few horrendous seconds when his world had been drowned with him in it. He had only vague memories of stumbling up the street, award from the flood, towards Millets and he had absolutely no idea how he had come up with the plan to break into the outdoor store and put on warm clothes and light up the stove…

He felt stoned, that was the nearest sensation he could relate this feeling to. As if his head was filled with smoke and mirrors, and his senses were all coming from the end of a long, foggy tunnel. Even when Chris and Donna had come into the store he had only noticed them in a dazed, detached fashion. The only thing he could feel with any clarity was the hammer blow in his back when the world had turned black and he had died for just a second beneath the utter weight of the sea. He shivered as the memory once again scored a dark path across his mind.

Donna squeezed him tighter as she felt the tremor run through Chris' body. She didn't know what had happened to him to make him like this. In truth she was having trouble thinking about much more than the sight of that jumbo jet ploughing into the city just a few hundred feet away from her. The huge rising fireball was imprinted into her mind just as surely as a photograph, and she knew the building crashing to the ground mere yards from her suddenly fragile body was a sensation that would never leave her.

She was jerked out of her reverie by the noise of footsteps coming down the steps from the first floor. She looked up to see CJ descending the stairs with a pile of electronic equipment cradled in his arms.

"Bingo," he said, his triumphant grin half hidden in the shadow of the hood of the thermal coat he was wearing. It was exceptionally cold in the store now, and both he and Donna had equipped themselves with the best cold weather gear Millets had to offer. If questions about this were asked further on down the line then CJ intended to lie.

"What is it?" Donna asked.

"Radio scanner," CJ replied, putting it on the floor. "Found it in the boss' office. Its what he was doing all that time when he went in there and locked the door behind him." He gave a snort of laughter. "That and drinking himself stupid." He pulled out a little bottle of Glenfiddich whisky from his pocket and tossed it to Donna.

"So why have you got that?"

"Because I want to know what's going on, and I'm going to listen on this until I find out."

"Do you know how to use it?"

"How hard can it be?" He hunkered down next to the stove. "I just hope it's got a battery."

"Has it?" Donna muttered.

"Yes!" was CJ's victorious reply. "God I'm good."

Radiating an air of smugness that was visible even in the near darkness, CJ flicked a series of switches and miraculously the scanner issued a burst of static. Donna shifted position to see the proceedings better and for the first time Chris acknowledged his friends' presence by flicking his eyes in their direction and he shifted slightly in Donna's arm. This unexpected movement caught the attention of both CJ and Donna.

"Welcome back to the land of the living," CJ said, fiddling with the tuning dial on the scanner, which then surprised the hell out of everyone by emitting a strident but scared human voice.

"…_we have to get away from here NOW…_"


	14. Voices From The Storm

'Allo. Zis ees Sputneek 'ere, wiz a new chapture of zis fantastique story…

Okay I'm gonna stop now with the lame attempt at the comedy French accent and just get down to presenting chapter whatever it is of Odyssey. In case you are interested this chapter and the one before it (Interception) were originally going to be one, but then I wanted to get a chapter published quickly because I was having a few bug problems with Fanfiction so I just posted what I had. Sorry dudes, consider this Interception Part 2.

Cheers!

P.S. www.joinme.info

**Aberdeen, Scotland**

**10.27 PM, November 30th 2004**

"…_we have to get away from here NOW…_"

The voice bursting through the static made CJ, Chris and Donna all jump like frightened rabbits. They were all breathing heavily, and all of them felt a chill run down their spine. The voice they on the scanner had been laced with infectious terror, and it spread over the airwaves to jump out from the scanner and make their skins crawl.

Donna was the first one to recover her composure.

"What the hell was that?" she asked, noticeably trying to keep her voice level.

"Dunno," CJ said. "I'll see if I can get it back." He gently twisted the tuning dial left and right, trying to regain the frequency that urgent order had broadcasted on. Chris, meanwhile, stirred slightly, and turned his eyes to Donna.

"We have to get out of here…" he croaked feebly.

"Chris!" Donna threw both her arms around her lover. "Oh, Chris! Thank God you're alright."

Chris tried to return the embrace, but his arms were stiff from the cold and the pain, and he could barely manage more than a rictus hug. He was beginning to realise his entire body was practically numb, but the one thing he could feel was his throat. It was a ball of pure agony that burned in his neck. His vocal cords felt shredded and even whispering a brief six words had left him with the certain desire never to speak again. But he had to; his two companions had no idea what had happened down at the docks. In truth, neither had he, but he knew that whatever had gone on in those few hellish minutes was terrible enough that he didn't want to be anywhere near this city or even the coast. He had a sudden urge to be home in Gala, away from the death and destruction in the Granite City. He tried to get his voice into gear again.

"The docks," he whispered, pulling Donna closer to his mouth "We have to get… away from…" He tailed off, his throat burning as he desperately tried to force the life-or-death information from out of his chest.

But now he had said all he could. The biting cold of the water he had swallowed had severely damaged the vocal cords in his larynx, and his voice was utterly wrecked. His face twisted with the frustration of it all. Donna, staring at him with wide eyes that caught beautifully the flickering light of the stove, instinctively squeezed her body closer to his.

The scanner emitted a long drawn out whine and CJ thumped its casing angrily. Instantly the voice they had heard returned.

"… we're still watertight but if we pull away from this building we're …" Once again the signal faded out and once again CJ subjected the scanner to his own unique brand of mechanics.

"What is that?" Donna asked.

"I guess it's a ship down the docks," CJ said, once again fiddling with the dial. "They sound like they're in a bit of trouble." Now a different voice, this one with a heavy Scottish accent, issued from the scanner.

"This is Sierra Six to all units. W have reports of a tidal wave at the docks. I repeat, a tidal wave on Trinity Quay and Market Street. This is not a drill. I repeat we have reports of a tidal wave-"

"Oscar Five to Sierra Six we are still at fire at Union Street we cannot…" The signal disappeared into static.

The shop floor was filled with a stunned silence. Slowly CJ and Donna's eyes met, transmitting to each other the cold, sickening feeling that the world really had turned on its head. The sensation that what was happening was changing all they knew, changing it utterly and forever.

"Did he say _tidal wave_?" Donna asked, her voice full of wonder.

"That can't be right," CJ replied. At the same moment, an identical thought struck the pair of them, and as one they turned to look at Chris. Chris, who was freezing cold, who was dripping wet and suddenly enlightenment dawned.

"Holy shit," CJ breathed.

"OKAY SKIPPER…"

Once again the unexpected voice, this time now almost deafeningly loud as the scanner found a stronger signal, cut through the mood of shock. CJ frantically twisted the volume dial.

"… I think we got lucky skipper. Fifteen minutes and I reckon we can get us free."

"Oh thank God," was the reply.

"That's it," CJ said suddenly.

"What?"

"We get out. On that ship, we get out of here while we still can."


	15. Out Into The Storm

An Nyung! Sputnik here! With another chapter of Odyssey! I'm so excited right now! The NHL is back! And the Devils kicked Sidney Crosby's rear end from here to Greenland! Woohoo! Plus my Giants are 3 and 1 and the highest scoring team in the NFL (go Eli!) and the Padres are in the post-season, which is good, even if they are going straight out again (damn the Cardinals). Still, what do you expect when you finish .506 for the season? 'Sigh'.

Still, on with the heart-warming story of the deaths of two billion people and the end of the reign of man.

Cheers!

P.S. www.joinme.info

**Aberdeen, Scotland**

**11.03 PM, November 30th 2004**

"You know we're only going half a mile, don't you CJ?"

"Yeah."

"So then," Donna asked. "Why do we need enough thermal gear to walk to the South Pole and back?"

"Because there is the better part of a half a foot of snow outside," CJ said, zipping up the front of his Eriksay 3 in 1 waterproof jacket. "And its only been snowing for ninety minutes. In this weather if you ain't dressed up right going half a mile is more than enough to turn you into a lollypop."

"How the hell do you know that?"

"Two things. Common sense," CJ pulled on a woolly hat, "and _Extreme Survival with Ray Mears_ on BBC 2."

"You have no common sense," Donna noted acidly.

"Well then we'd better hope Ray Mears knew what he was talking about."

Chris passed a piece of paper to Donna. She took it from him with a smile.

"'Have we got everything we need?'" she read aloud.

"Torches and thermal gear," said CJ, a touch irritably. "Yep, got it all." Chris had informed both CJ and Donna of what had happened to him at the docks through a series of notes covered in nearly illegible handwriting. The story told on those scrappy pieces of paper had shocked the pair beyond words, and had convinced everyone that they needed to leave. Their options were limited. They couldn't drive, couldn't afford a plane ticket, and the railway line was underwater for – as far as CJ could work out from Chris' notes – at least five miles from the station. They weren't walking too far without freezing to death and they weren't going home. Another transmission over the scanner had put paid to that option.

"This is the emergency broadcast system for the Grampian region. Due to severe weather we are recommending all residents head south to Edinburgh and Glasgow. Take only what you can carry, placing special attention to food and water, bedding and sanitary supplies. This evacuation is not mandatory but we…" The signal had been lost at that point, and the instant it had finished CJ had stood up and begun collecting gear to implement his plan. They were going to hitch a ride on the ship they had picked up the stray messages from. It was a truly crazy plan, but they could all see it was the best in a field of one.

"We all ready then?" CJ asked.

"As we'll ever be." She looked for Chris for confirmation. By way of reply he handed her another note. "'Okay then, Captain Wow'" she read. "'How are we going to let these ship people know we want a lift?'"

CJ looked confused for a second, before stalking off in the direction of the cellar door. Chris smirked at having thought of something CJ hadn't.

Halfway down the cellar steps CJ realised he was in trouble. He had remembered that there was some stock that was going to be put on display tomorrow that would be useful in getting the attention of whoever was on board that ship. Flares, no less. Bright red, _waterproof_, signal flares. They could light them up and even in the goddamned blizzard that was developing outside you could see them for the best part of a mile in any direction. So here he was, in the cellar, looking for the flares, stood in knee-high water.

That was why he was in trouble. The store was situated high above the water, sixty feet above sea level at least. And now they were being flooded out. He knew he had no time to spare in this cataclysmic situation. He swung the torch about, feeling the first risings of panic inside him that was beginning to cloud his mind. For a second he couldn't remember where the flares had been stashed, but thankfully the fog cleared, he turned the beam to the left, splashed over to the flares, grabbed them and waded out through the door. He wasn't two-thirds up the stairs when he realised the water in the cellar was actively rising. He bounded up to the shop floor as fast as he restrictive clothing allowed.

"Okay," he gasped, panting through a mixture of cold, fear and fatigue. "Flares. We use these to signal to the ship when we get close enough. Okay?" Both Donna and Chris nodded. "Good, because we need to leave now." He pushed past them to the door, the shoebox-sized container of flares tucked under one arm and the torch in the other. He ducked through the shattered doorway and out into the street. Donna followed him out with Chris bringing up the rear.

The howling of the wind and snow had been muted whilst they had been indoors, Chris noted as he staggered with the force of a sixty-mile an hour gust which cut down the length of Union Street to barrel straight into him. He could barely see the figures of CJ and Donna before him and for a second he almost panicked before he could make them out as vague blocky shapes before him. They almost looked like they were being transmitted onto a crap television on a terrible signal, slashed across as they were with driving snow. He struggled harder to keep up with them. He was filled with the stark terror of what would happen if he lost sight of them. He knew instinctively that in this almost total whiteout that he could stagger around blindly until he froze without once finding the shelter which was all around them.

They turned a corner and the ground began to slope downhill. Now their pace slowed even more. The ground was treacherous, and the last thing Chris wanted to do was slip and get left behind. He wouldn't even be able to shout to his friends to wait as he got up, his voice was still ruined and going out in this storm wouldn't be doing he vocal chords any favours.

It seemed to Chris that they had been slogging on for hours when they finally stopped. He drew level with CJ and Donna. They were staring into a white void, with the odd glimpse of buildings before them. He wondered why they had stopped, and then the curtains of snow suddenly parted and he wondered no more.

They had reached the edge of the water. It was now, he realised, at least halfway up Bridge Street. From what he could see, it was as if the harbour had expanded, and now filled the streets before him as far as he could see. He felt his bones at that moment that whatever had happened to Aberdeen would be more than a merely local problem. Something deep within told him that whatever was going on now was devastation on a far larger scale.

He noticed CJ was pointing at something out in the harbour. He followed the line of the finger. It was a huge ship, with a red hull and white superstructure. It was also the only source of light anywhere around them. It seemed to Chris that every single light on the ship was blazing defiantly against the storm. That must be it, he realised. The _RRS James Clark Ross_. The ship that was to rescue them.

And it was out in the harbour, separated from them by a quarter of a mile of storm-whipped, deathly cold water…


	16. The Harbour

Ufanyihadjei! I'm not so excited as I write this since it appears the Padres have just lost again, which means they are heading at high speed for the wrong end of a series sweep.

Bugger.

Anyway, back to the story. In case you've forgotten, CJ, Chris and Donna are stood on the edge of the flooded harbour, looking out at the _James Clark Ross_. So, on with the story, and as you read think of the poor old Padres and pray that the entire Cardinals locker room comes down with some sort of debilitating stomach disease.

Cheers!

P.S. www.joinme.info

**Aberdeen, Scotland**

**11.23 PM, November 30th 2004**

A quarter of a mile of grey, foamy, freezing water stood between the three friends and the _R.R.S. James Clark Ross_. There was, Chris could see, no way of getting out to the ship. Swimming was clearly suicide; they would get barely fifty feet before succumbing to the biting cold. He turned to CJ, but his flatmate had apparently read his mind and lit a flare. CJ waved the flare high above him. Sparks fluttered all around and everything took on a lurid red glow, but all three of them could see that there was not a cat in hell's chance of anybody on the ship spotting them through the blizzard.

Abruptly the curtains of snow closed, and the view of the harbour was cut off as if Chris' eyes had been obscured with a blindfold.

_Bugger_, he thought.

"What do we do?" screamed Donna over the howling of the blizzard. Chris realised that even if he could talk, he didn't have a clue what to do next. And it appeared that CJ didn't have any bright ideas either. They were well and truly stuck in this devastated city, and, barring a miracle, were not going to live out this spectacular storm. He began looking around for someplace to take shelter. He began to gesture that they should all go back to Millets when one of those coincidences that he thought happened only in the movies but in fact happened in real life all the time occurred right in front of them.

From out of the cloak of snow something orange was tossed out of the choppy waters and ground to a halt a few feet away from Chris' feet. His eyes opened wide at the incredible sight of a RNLI lifeboat now perched incongruously in the snow. He turned and began frantically tugging on Donna's sleeve to get her attention. Apparently neither she nor CJ had seen the lifeboat be simply spat out of the sea. He guessed that the wave had ripped it loose from its moorings at the lifeboat station, and now currents and wind had given it to them as a gift from the God he didn't believe in.

Donna finally noticed his insistent tugging and turned. Chris saw her gaze fall upon on the lifeboat and felt a small surge of heat within him as her face lit up like a Christmas tree. Donna grabbed CJ by the shoulders and hauled him round to face the lifeboat. Although a scarf wrapped around his head obscured most of CJ's face, Chris saw his entire body radiate utter delight. For a second nobody thought about the problem of driving it and getting to the _James Clark Ross_.

Then they did. The lifeboat didn't look heavy, but nobody doubted that it probably was. Nor did they know how to drive it or even how to get the engine started. Still it was their only chance, Chris knew, so they had better start solving their problems now.

The stern of the lifeboat was pointing out into the harbour. CJ advanced towards the boat, trying to keep his balance on the icy slope. He took an experimental grip on the bowlines and heaved. Much to his surprise it scraped a few feet through the ankle-high layer of snow that had formed on the street. He motioned furiously at his friends to join him, and together the three of them with a huge amount of effort hauled the lifeboat sideways into the surf.

CJ saw a fine white powder falling before his eyes. For a second in his semi-dazed state he thought it was some kind of terminal dandruff. Then he realised what it was. The sweat from his brow was freezing almost as fast as it left his body, and there it was dropping off him like his own personal blizzard. He felt a surge of panic run through him with this thought; his desire to be somewhere warm and safe became almost overwhelming.

The lifeboat was lying parallel with the waterline now, and the three of them clambered in. Chris shot CJ an expression that read "_Now what?"_

"How hard can it be?" CJ screamed in reply. He swivelled in his seat to look at the outboard motor behind him and squinted through the driving snow for a few seconds before grasping hold of the starter cord and yanked it hard. The motor coughed and spluttered in vain. Chris felt his heart sink, whatever ordeal the engine had gone through since being struck by the wave had clearly damaged it beyond use.

"We have to use these then!" Donna yelled, brandishing a pair of paddles she had found in some hidden compartment. Chris' expression now read "_You have got to be kidding,"_ but luckily everyone was too preoccupied with the current situation to notice. CJ took hold of one of the paddles and dug it into the water. Donna did the same on the other side of the boat, and with just a few pulls on the paddles they were under way.

Almost instantly the going was hard. The sea was rough as hell, grey and muscular, and CJ felt his muscles creaking with the strain. With every wave the boat was tossed high in the air, and following every brief flight the bow dug into the following trough, sending water cascading over them all. Sat in the stern, Chris took a tight hold of the box of flares, clutching it tight to his chest. Without those flares he knew, there was no way they could signal to the ship and they would never be picked up. Of course they had to find the ship first, and right now he had no idea even where the ship was.

He decided that he had better start using the flares now. There was no point in saving them. He flipped open the catches of the box, took out one of the red cylinders and cracked it on. Instantly a powerful red glare illuminated a six-foot circle around the boat. With one arm holding the flare aloft, and the other gripping the box tightly, he found it increasingly difficult to keep his balance in his seat. He just hoped that they would find the _James Clark Ross_ soon.

The flare in his hand went out. He tossed it overboard and grabbed another one from out of the box. He was about to light it when suddenly his world was turned upside down for a second he had the surreal sensation of flying, and his eyes picked up a brief impression of flailing limbs and the lifeboat tossed into the air. He wondered what all this meant when he hit the water and the breath was shocked out of his lungs.

He had no idea what was going on. But he could feel the biting cold constricting his chest. Instantly breathing became painful, almost impossible. He quickly came to the conclusion he was about to drown, and the only thing he could do was light the flare he had kept clutched in his hand and raise it high above the water.

But the effort of staying afloat and keeping one arm raised above his head quickly drained the energy from his body. He couldn't see CJ or Donna, and his last thought as the ocean closed over his head was that it was incredibly unfair that he was about to die alone…


	17. Man Overboard

**Eddie Guerrero 1967- 2005**

**R.I.P.**

* * *

**R.R.S. James Clark Ross**

**11.23 PM, November 30th 2004**

Dr. Clive Monroe and Crewman Oliver Cole had been stowing stores in the galley when the surge had hit. A three foot steel girder had punched straight through the hull and had avoided skewering Dr. Monroe by about six inches. As water had begun pouring in through the hole the two of them had scrambled clear and Cole had sliced his forearm open on the edge of the door. Now, from the mad dash topside, they were covered in scrapes and bruises.

But, as Captain Marvin had told them, their injuries had to wait.

Currently they were both wrapped up in thermal gear, struggling in the grip of the blizzard to clear all the debris that had been left on the deck of the ship when it had powered away from the building it had been thrown into during the surge. They were also here to lash down any loose equipment that may swing loose and damage the ship during the horrendous battering the _James Clark Ross _would endure while on the open seas. Privately Cole – a five-time veteran of Antarctic voyages – thought that if what they were heading into was really as bad as Tony Willis had made out then most of what was up here on deck was going to get ripped away no matter what. Still, they were going to need all the help they could get to survive this storm, so here they were, the only two people on board with no function, pressed into service in the crew's hour of need.

The blizzard conditions made the work almost unendurable. Cole could barely feel his fingers, despite the three layers of gloves he wore. His arms and legs were practically numb, he knew that unless they finished their task pretty quickly then they would be going past the point of no return and they wouldn't care anymore whether or not the ship would be damaged.

Currently the pair of them were struggling with a badly damaged sofa. The amount of water it had absorbed had made it ten times heavier than normal. Thankfully it was only a few feet away from the starboard side so just a minute or two of heavy lifting and they could throw it into the sea. And that, Cole had decided, would be that. To stay out any longer would mean death from exposure.

With a final strain they threw the sofa overboard. Both men exhaled hard with the exertion and shared an expression, which said, "That's it." Cole was exhausted from a mere fifteen minutes of work. Dr Monroe needed no second telling and turned to go. It was then that Cole saw the light in the sea. It was not much more than a dim red glow but the experienced seaman recognised it for what it was immediately.

_Distress flare_.

His curiosity piqued he went over to the edge of the ship and peered down in the tempestuous harbour. At first he couldn't see the flare, and for a second thought that he'd lost it. But, he swept the water with a practised eye and found the tiny red glow again. He tugged on Dr. Monroe's parka and gesticulated furiously at the point of light. For a second Monroe looked puzzled, then his eyes widened as he saw too. The flare had illuminated a circle of sea about ten feet wide less than thirty feet from the ship, and lit up inside that circle were three figures struggling desperately to stay above the waves. Instantly Cole and Monroe sprung into action, dashing to open the boxes for the life rings. There were two, red and white and stamped with _R.R.S. James Clark Ross_. Cole tied them both on to the railings with hands now supercharged with adrenaline. That done, he handed one of the rings to Dr Monroe, and with all the force he could through arms that burned with pain, flung his life ring towards the circle of light.

It landed practically on top of two of the figures. He squinted his eyes, trying to peer through a sudden squall that reduced visibility by about half. Just as quickly it lifted again, and Cole felt a surge of elation. Those two figures had grabbed hold of the life ring, and he began pulling them in as Dr Monroe threw his own ring into the rapidly dying light of the flare. Cole kept hauling, feeling the agonised burning across his back and shoulders as he fought against the weight of the people in the water and the total power of the sea.

Suddenly the flare winked out. This didn't matter to Cole, as those he was pulling closer were now within the powerful lights of the ship. But a quick sideways glance at Dr Monroe saw the other man's face now riddled with panic. The doctor could no longer see the remaining figure in the water and he strained his eyes to see past the glare of the _James Clark Ross_ into the darkness. Then he felt a weight on the rope and he began pulling, praying that what the felt was the grasp of a survivor and not the monstrous pull of the ocean.

Cole had the life ring and its passengers up against the hull of the ship, and he knew there was no way in hell he could pull them up here on his own. Frantically he wrapped the slack of the rope around his arm, and with his free hand pulled out the two-way radio clipped to his belt.

"This is Cole," he screamed over the crash of the sea and the howling of the blizzard. "Come in anybody!"

"This is Marvin, what is it?"

"Captain, we have people in the water. We need assistance on the after deck now!"

Cole never heard the Captain's reply of "Copy." Instead he dropped the radio and began hauling with all his might. He might as well have been tugging on a mountain. All he could do was keep the pair as close as possible to the ship and just hope that they could hang on.

It took less than thirty seconds for help to arrive, but it felt to the two men at the railings like an eternity. Cole nearly dropped the rope when he felt a gloved hand come down on his shoulder, so focused he was on the backbreaking task. The unseen figure behind him took a hold on the rope, and together they hauled up what felt like a baby elephant but what turned out to be, as they fell over the railings, a young man and woman, both in their early twenties and both nearly half-drowned and frozen.

"Get these two below!" he shouted to his unseen helper. He dropped the line in his hands, and despite the screaming pain across his entire upper body he staggered over to Dr Monroe, took a firm grip on the rope trailing behind him and once again began to pull. Both men were almost beyond exhaustion, but the urge to save a fellow human being pushed them beyond the pain barrier.

"I see him!" Monroe screamed. With one hand on the rope he stood up on the railings and leaned over, his free hand reaching downwards to the last survivor just below the level of the deck. Cole saw a hand shoot up towards Monroe, grab the arm and pull in a desperate attempt to reach safety.

What happened next seemed to happen in slow motion. Dr Monroe was off balance, perched precariously as he was on the railings. Cole could see right away that this was a bad thing, but before he could utter a word the doctor had lost all balance and was yanked bodily over the railings, a look of pure terror in his face. He was gone in a flash, but the last man he had been pulling up had caught the railings in an iron grip. Cole grasped the hand and pulled a blond-haired young man onto the deck. Once he was sure the man was safe he dashed to the railings and peered into the sea for Dr Monroe, life ring in hand.

Nothing. The doctor had gone, dragged under the waves in less time it took to breathe.


	18. Waking Up

Da dika xalda shyn! Sputnik here with yet another chapter of the magnificent story 'Odyssey'. For all you lucky folks out there on t'internet, good news! From now on chapters should come thick and fast, at least for a little while, as plot twists and turns come at you like an old blind man speeding down the wrong way of the motorway (freeway, autobahn, whatever you may call it). What will happen to Chris now he has killed one of the crew? Will CJ remember his girlfriend 300 miles away? Will the _James Clark Ross_ ever get under way? The answers to all these questions and more lie ahead!

Cheers!

P.S. www.joinme.info

****

**_R.R.S. James Clark Ross_**

**1.03 A.M, December 1st 2004**

_God_, thought Chris, his brain screaming in pain at the bright lights above him. _My throat hurts_. This particular thought occupied him for some minutes, going slowly round and round in his mind, just ambling along and enjoying the sights. It was, he noticed, mainly enjoying crappy sights, of which he seemed to have too many of. He was just coming to the conclusion that having this many crappy sights was not as good thing to have as a mind when he realised with a start there was an enormous weight pressing down on his body. He tried to sit up, but his arms and legs were having none of it. Instead they were choosing to lie there, weak and unresponsive.

He forced his eyes open. That hurt too. Something large and pink loomed over him. He tried to scream in fear, as whatever hovered above him was utterly terrifying. But his voice was still silenced. Suddenly he felt his throat contract as a surge of salty water rushed up from his lungs and he instinctively turned on his side and vomited the filthy dark seawater onto the floor.

Rolling again onto his back, his eyes suddenly working again, he could make out the clean white ceiling above him. He stared at it for a beat, trying to connect his last coherent memory with the antiseptic sterility that filled his horizons. He failed. His last coherent memory was… horrible. Again. Once more the last thing he had seen was a mountainous wall of water, and the last thing he had known was the pain of trying to breathe and feeling nothing in his lungs but the ocean. Twice, God that was ridiculous.

_So_, how could he connect that to this?

"Hello?"

Chris jumped. His now-functioning eyes made out a concerned face hanging above him. He felt a surge of heat run through his numbed limbs. She was wrapped in a silvery thermal blanket, her long blonde hair hanging down towards him and her face pinched with cold. Her face cracked in a smile and she hugged her man tightly. He returned her smile with a pretty weak approximation of his own, and tried to show his own relief at seeing her without the use of his voice or body. He suddenly felt infinitely better. Maybe things were going to work out after all. Quite how he wasn't sure, but the feel of the one he loved filled him with a surge of optimism.

Donna finally released her grip and pulled away.

"You okay?" she asked. Chris widened his smile and nodded. Another face came into sight.

"Hey pal," said CJ. Chris' eyes opened in shock at the ugly freshly stitched scar adorning his flatmates forehead. "Guy hit me on the head with a life ring," he said with a thin, rueful grin as he noticed Chris' eyes go wide. CJ too was soaked through and wrapped in a thermal blanket, his face tinged blue with dark rings under his eyes.

"Do you remember what happened?" Donna asked gently. Chris tried to shrug, the universal signal for 'Not really'. Now more or less fully awake, he pulled his arms free of the layers of blankets pinning him down and mimed a pen and paper. Donna looked around the room – Chris could now see it was a medical room of some kind – and handed him a pen and a spiral notepad. With fingers he could barely feel he scrawled out what he could remember of the trip out into the harbour and what had happened between then and now – essentially nothing.

"Well that was useful," CJ observed sourly, the hole in his forehead shortening his temper. Donna shot him a poisonous glance and hugged Chris once again with relief. CJ didn't look all that bothered. Now that Chris came to think about it, his flatmate looked distracted, worried. Currently, he was chewing nervously on his fingernails. He scribbled again on the notepad and wrote simply _What?_

"Jenni," replied CJ simply. "I'm worried 'bout her, y'know?" Chris thought about writing _she'll be ok_ or some such but realising after what the three of them had been through so far this night words like those were laughably hollow. "Haven't heard from her since Sunday."

Chris made the mime for phone.

"Bottom of the harbour mate."

CJ really did have no common sense, Chris thought. He reached for the pad again.

_Must be phone in building_

"We're on a ship, Chris," Donna said.

_The one we were heading for?_

"Yep."

_When do we leave?_

"Is that him?" said a loud female voice from the doorway. Donna and CJ whirled around. Stood in the door was a smartly dressed woman in her late forties. She had a terrible look on her face of fury shot through with grief. Her eyes were red and raw, contrasting starkly with her pale skin. She stormed over to CJ and prodded him in the chest. "Was it you?" she asked, her voice rising in pitch and every word laced with accusation.

"What?" CJ snapped back, clearly in no mood for this.

"Did you kill my husband?"

Chris sat bolt upright at this. The fog in his brain suddenly had lifted and a new rapier sharp memory had just lanced through his mind. _Oh God, no_.

"Zoe, no!"

A man dressed in an orange boiler suit ran into the medical room and pushed between the woman and CJ. Chris immediately figured this new arrival to be an engineer on the ship, and he was radiating an air of competence and authority.

"You killed Clive!" Zoe said over the shoulder of the engineer. Then she broke down, and began crying into the chest of this new arrival.

The sound of footsteps heralded the entrance of several new people, all dressed in warm clothing, whom Chris guessed to be more of the crew. Another woman came up to the sobbing Zoe, and gently led her out of the room with an arm around her shoulder.

"That's him Captain," said one man to another shorter guy dressed in a navy sweater with gold stripes on his shoulders. They were both looking at Chris.

"Okay, son," the captain began. "You have some explaining to do."


	19. Setting Out

Nîmen hâo! Sputnik here. How are all you fans out there in Fanfictionland? Doing well I hope 'cos here is another chapter like. In this chapter various exciting things happen and the _James Clark Ross _finally, finally, gets under way. Probably anyway. I'm not really sure, but then again I haven't actually written it yet so we shall see what emerges, eh?

Anyway, onwards and upwards.

Cheers!

P.S. www.joinme.info

**_R.R.S. James Clark Ross_**

**2.15 A.M. December 1st, 2004**

CJ was sat on the floor in the corner of the infirmary, beginning to feel the first signs of complete exhaustion. He was keeping his eyes open, but it was a struggle. Today had been the most physically and mentally tiring day he had ever know and the fog of sleep was knocking persistently at the doors to his body. The problem was, every time he tried to let himself drift away, a slide-show displaying all that had happened to him today paraded on the back of his eyelids, and he was jerked instantly to full consciousness.

The last hour hadn't been so pleasant, either. He, Chris and Donna had been subjected to the kind of interrogation that would have put the KGB to shame. Whatever had happened to the captain tonight he had not been best pleased, screaming questions at them like who were they and why they were here. CJ had just replied truthfully, since he honestly couldn't think of any other reason why they would have done what they had done to get on board this ship. He had told the captain that they just wanted a ride out of Aberdeen.

"You could have been killed," the captain had said.

"I'm not an idiot, mister. I can see something big is happening. I wouldn't give us good odds if we had stayed where we were."

CJ had figured out – through concerted eavesdropping – that in the mayhem that had engulfed them all a number of people from the crew had been killed, one of them whilst saving their lives, and that was why that woman had come in and screamed at him, and that was why the captain was so pissed off at everybody.

_There was no need for the Spanish Inquisition act, though_, CJ thought to himself.

Of course CJ could guess another reason, that unless this ship got moving very soon then nobody would be going anywhere. That unless the _James Clark Ross_ was on her way to the open seas that she would be their tomb. Frankly, however, he didn't really care. All that had occupied his mind since they had been hauled on board this boat was one word – _Jenni_.

He figured that he would be pretty safe here once – _hah, if_ – they finally got under way. From the intercepted radio transmissions and conversations on the ship he had deduced that the plan was to leave Aberdeen and head full steam southwards, getting away from this 'Superstorm' as fast as the engines could drive them. So he wasn't worried about himself in the slightest.

He knew Jenni lived in a little village on the up in the hills that marked the beginning of the North Yorkshire Moors, an expanse of wild moorland and heather that covered a large portion of the North Yorkshire. He could even quote her exact co-ordinates, since he had learnt them when they had been doing their Duke of Edinburgh awards. Her village was at a relatively high altitude, very isolated and probably – if they were seeing the same amount of snow as up here – going to be cut off very soon. He also knew that she wouldn't be getting the hell out of there. After all, so far there was no reason for her to think otherwise. It was snowing, so what?

But his heart ached because he knew what she did not – could not – know. This storm was going to be unlike anything seen for ten thousand years; to be trapped beneath it was to die. It was amazing, he reflected, just how terrified you could be just be eavesdropping on a few conversations. And how he wished he hadn't heard that the love of his life was about to buried under a trillion tonnes of ice and snow.

It was quite simple really. He wasn't worried for his immediate family, his mother and younger brother all lived in the south of Spain and he was fairly sure they would be safe. And even if the storm did reach that far south, then surely they would have enough warning to escape. As for his extended family, they had all been on his late father's side, and he did not know them all that well to begin with, so that didn't worry him unduly.

No, all his worry was focused on one person, and as he sat in the cold corner of the infirmary he wrapped his arms around his knees and stared off into space, not even feeling the gentle but persistent roll of the ship as it rode the waves in the harbour. What could he do? He had nearly died getting on this ship; there was no way he could get off. Besides, they weren't even allowed out of the room. Once the captain had finished his little question and answer session he had left the infirmary and locked the Goddamned door behind him. So now he couldn't even find a phone and warn her, tell her to head south, if it wasn't already too late to do so.

Suddenly he both heard and felt a rumble from the depths of the ship. The noise was so startling he noticed Donna jump up from Chris' shoulder where she had been dozing. He was no expert but he guessed that this was the engines starting up. This was confirmed a second later when the PA system burst into life.

"Now hear this, now hear this. This is the captain speaking, we are getting underway. That is all." There was silence from the PA for a second before the same voice spoke again. "And may God have mercy on us all."

_How inspiring_, CJ thought grimly. He looked at his watch; miraculously still working after all it had gone through this night. He blinked to clear his eyes from the daze that had begun to shroud them, and finally made out the figures on the quartz screen.

It was two twenty-eight on the morning of December the first, 2004, and the _James Clark Ross_, with fifteen souls on board, was setting out. And waiting for her like a slavering beast was three thousand miles of open ocean and the deadliest storm in human history.

And it waswith a stately grace and power the _James Clark Ross_ headed out into the teeth of the superstorm.


	20. The Wind Chill Factor

Apparently I can't say anything here anymore, so I'm not going to…

Blast. Ignore that last bit.

Blast again. Ignore that part as well.

Blast. Oh _forget_ it.

Marhaba! Just let me put my thanks to Mat for the rockin' review. To answer your criticism, the reason my solution to getting our people on the _James Clark Ross_ is so unlikely and – lets face it – so incredibly lame is because for the life of me I couldn't figure out how to get the three leads from the street to the ship, so I basically cheated, but what the hell, this is fiction, I can do what I like. Though if you do have any ideas as to how Chris, CJ and Donna could cross half a mile of water in an equally exciting but more plausible way feel free to email me.

Cheers!

P.S. www.joinme.info

_**R.R.S. James Clark Ross**_

**8.20 A.M, December 1st, 2004**

It was dawn in the North Sea, not that Marvin could tell. The storm was upon them, and it had turned night into day. The captain was on the bridge of the ship, peering vainly out into the howling blizzard they were steaming into. Every searchlight they possessed was trained outwards. The ship's radar had been rendered useless by the enormous waves they had to plough through. And if, God forbid, there was someone else out there, the only warning they would get would be visual. The North Sea wasn't exactly empty, he knew. There were so many rigs, ferries, transports, fishing boats and recreational idiots in the area there was barely any room for the water. With radar down and visibility as utterly rotten as it was they were forced to be ultra vigilant, and Marvin had stationed six members of the crew with binoculars at the lookout posts in the hope they could spot any potential disaster before it happened.

He didn't envy them one bit. The _James Clark Ross_ was driving through the foulest, roughest storm he had ever experienced, and as an Antarctic veteran he was no stranger to the worst weather the world had to offer. The thing was, if it was this bad in the North Sea, what was it going to be like once they got out into the real open ocean? What was it going to be like in the mountainous seas of the Atlantic?

The _James Clark Ross_ was – due to her design as an ice-strengthened ship – as stable as an ice-skating bull in a china shop on the best of seas. Now, in the storm-wracked North Sea it took all his experience and more than a little luck just to stay roughly vertical. Currently he was stood, legs braced and hands gripping tightly the railing that ran around the bridge and he still had been knocked to the floor twice when the ship had dug her prow into some truly monster waves. _James Clark Ross_ was steaming through a watery hell, and every so often as the blizzard gusted particularly ferociously or a massive wave swallowed the bow Marvin truly doubted her ability to stay afloat.

But despite the stomach-churning motion of the ship, she was doing just that, bravely shouldering aside waves that would contemptuously drown lesser ships. A morose and bad-tempered drunk he may be, Marvin was still the master and commander of a British vessel, and he could feel the strain this storm was putting on his ship, and he hated himself for wondering when – brave as she was – the _James Clark Ross_ would be defeated by this awesome weather and sunk.

"Captain." Marvin turned his head to see McIntyre walk onto the bridge. His engineer braced himself in the doorway as the ship once again bit into another huge wave and began the arduous process of hauling herself free of thousands of tons of freezing water. The engineer walked awkwardly across to the captain, reaching the stanchion just in time to brace himself yet again.

"What?" Marvin asked, with a hint of irritation. He wasn't really irritated; he was just trying to disguise his fear.

"Repairs are holding up so far. Unless something major gives out, we should be okay." The ship shuddered once again, and McIntyre grimaced. "Anyway, I've got my crew on six hour watches. If something does break we'll know straight away."

"That it?"

"Yeah. I'm off to get my head down. Don't call me for five hours or I will murder you in your sleep." The engineer turned and left the tense silence behind him. Marvin stewed for a bit, wishing he had an engineer who was both a genius and personable. _Less Scottish_, he thought with a grim smile.

Tony Willis stumbled past the departing McIntyre and onto the bridge. The weatherman was very much out of his depth at the moment. He had never been on an Antarctic voyage before, never really been on a boat for an extended trip before. This storm was far beyond anything he had ever experienced. They had only been going six hours or so, and he had been sick three times. The constant, jarring motion of the ship filled him with nausea, and more than once as he had lain on his bunk and wished for death. He was a fucking weatherman, not a sailor for Christ's sake.

He was only up and about now because he was looking for the cook, David Morse. With the entire medical crew dead Morse was the most qualified first-aider in the crew. It was he who had stitched up the head of the tall man they had pulled out of the water in Aberdeen.

"Where's David?" Willis asked, hating the sour taste of vomit that filled his mouth.

"He's on spotting duty out on the wing."

It seemed to Marvin that Willis had suddenly received a jolt of fifty thousand volts or something, so sudden and complete was the change in the weatherman.

"Call him back in, Captain! Call him back in _now_!"

"What?"

Tony dived across the bridge and yanked open the door which led outside to the starboard bridge wing. Instantly freezing wind and ice blasted inside. Willis was staggered for a second, before he dashed outside with not a thought for his own safety and without a consideration for the elements. Bewildered, Marvin moved over to the bulkhead and popped his head outside as much as he dared.

"Help me!" Willis screamed above the sound of the maelstrom. The weatherman had Morse in his arms and was struggling to bring the inert cook back inside. Marvin took an arm and shouldered half the weight and together they dragged the bundle of flesh and thermals back into the warmth and relative safety of the bridge.

They lowered Morse to the floor. The cook was soaked through, his face obscured by the hood of his parka, now waterlogged and weighing about five times more than it normally would.

"Jesus man, didn't you think of how cold it would be out there?" Willis was unzipping the parka, trying to get the dangerously wet clothing off.

"But, the clothes are rated for the temperature…" Marvin began, not understanding.

Willis pulled the hood from Morse's face, and instantly stopped. He could see that any further action was just a waste of time. The cook's face was blue. Lips, nose, cheeks, all were a pale blue. It didn't take a genius to see that David Morse had died standing up, his spotting glasses still in his hands.

"Wind chill, Captain," Willis said, sitting back with a breathless resignation. "And water temperature. His clothes are so soaked, it all added up and those minimum ratings didn't mean shit." And with that the nausea returned and he dashed from the bridge, trying to hold his stomach contents in before he could reach the nearest head.

And then it dawned on Marvin, still kneeling in a freezing puddle, that he had ordered five more souls out into the storm. And with that knowledge came the burning scythe of guilt tearing through his soul. The guilt of a murderer. And he couldn't force out the simple order "Bring them all in," because in all fairness, it was already far too late…


	21. Hail Mary

Fesapshi! Sputnik here. Hope you are all doing well, whoever you may be. Here is another chapter of my story. I don't know what is going to happen in this chapter, I'm just riffing basically, making it up as I go.

Good God, I can't believe I just said that…

Anyway, this chapter was created with the help of the films _Frailty _(No Soul Is Safe) and _U-571_ (Nine Ordinary Men Are About To Change History) and six cans of Dr Pepper (Zero Added Sugar! Great Taste!) And now with any luck Paramount Pictures, Universal Pictures and Coca-Cola Enterprises will keep me in DVDs and fizzy pop from now until the day my eyes and teeth fall out.

Cheers!

P.S. www.joinme.info

**_R.R.S. James Clark Ross_**

**9.02 A.M, December 1st, 2004**

Chris had been sick. Normally this would be just inconvenient and messy, but when it came to vomit and Chris normal didn't enter the equation. The sight of vomit filled him with an overwhelming nausea. It was bad enough when he saw someone else be sick. _Hell, _CJ thought_, it was bad enough when he thought about being sick_.He was afraid of vomit exactly like other people were afraid of snakes or spiders or heights. Normally Chris combated this by popping an almost infinite number of XXX mints – anti-sickness mint shells he called them – but the packet he had been carrying with him before all this had started was probably at the bottom of Aberdeen harbour. Even that might have been alright if it hadn't been for the roller coaster ride this voyage had turned into with minutes of the ship reaching the open ocean.

Chris had lasted twenty minutes before being sick for the first time, and from then on he had been caught in a vicious cycle. The sight of the vomit had caused him to be sick again, and the sight of that had… and so on. He had emptied his stomach contents four hours ago, and was now heaving up foul yellow bile every ten minutes or so. His face was grey and drained, and he sat shivering against the far wall. Donna had one arm wrapped around his shoulders, pinning a blanket around his skinny frame, and the other arm holding a bucket, ready to hold it beneath her lover's mouth when the need arose.

CJ was sat as far away as possible, pressed up against the opposite bulkhead. It took a lot to make his stomach turn, but the smell in the infirmary was unbelievable, and no amount of British reserve was going to make him suffer by sitting near his friend. He closed his eyes and leant his head against the wall with a sigh.

Almost unconsciously his arm moved and his hand closed around the rosary beads that had once hung from his belt and were now curled up in the pocket of his borrowed trousers. He had been born a Catholic, his Irish grandparents had made sure he was raised a Catholic, his education had raised him even further a Catholic, and being away from his family and girlfriend had kept him one up here, strangely enough.

"Hail Mary," he began, watching the beads swing from his fist with the motion of the ship. He knew he was praying in that semi-fervent whispering that religious maniacs used whenever they sat next to him on trains and buses, but he didn't care. He was scared shitless, locked in a vomit-filled room on a ship in the middle of the ocean, far away from home and the people he loved.

"Right," he said, putting the beads back in his pocket. He got up and made his way to the door. He stood for a second, examining its features. Then he took a firm grip of the frame with both hands and knocked the door open with one powerful kick of his foot.

"Wait here," he said, with one backwards glance at Chris and Donna.

"I'm not goin' anywhere," Chris murmured, only half conscious.

"Won't be ten minutes," CJ muttered, striding through the doorway. He looked left, right, and randomly struck out, heading left down the corridor. He hadn't got ten feet when he was tossed into the wall by a sudden lurch of the ship. The impact gave him a dead arm, and he clutched at it frantically to quell the pain. As the ship began to roll the other way he regained his balance and carried on down the corridor, more carefully now to ensure he kept his footing. He kept on walking this way, keeping the muscles in his legs tensed and ready for the next big wave, until he came up to a t-junction.

A sign on the wall showed two arrows pointing either way up the corridor. CJ grinned at his fortune as he peered up at the sign that said simply "COM ROOM", and then he cursed as he was taken off guard and thrown once more into the wall with flesh bruising force. He had been on ships before during a storm, including one memorable cross-Channel ferry trip where it had seemed that nearly everyone (except him, thank God) had been spewing their guts out all over the place. But those, they were _nothing_ compared to this battering. He knew – well, guessed – from the big 'DECK E' sign before him that he was fairly low down on the ship, and he shuddered to think what it was like higher up on the bridge, where the frantic rocking and rolling of the ship would be many times worse.

_Right_, he resolved, _COM ROOM it was_. Where there was, with any luck at least a radio, which given time he could figure out, and if he was really lucky a satellite phone. He laughed beneath his breath. _Even an idiot could work one of those_, he thought with a sly grin, and was then rewarded for his smugness with a third painful trip into the wall.

Rubbing his arm CJ followed the COM ROOM arrow, walking past a series of identical white doors which bore labels like 'Hydrology Dept' and 'Stores'. None of the doors bore the label 'COM ROOM', but ahead of him were a flight of steps, with a watertight door at the top. The heavy was door was open a fraction, so lacking any alternatives he went up, treading extra carefully because he really _did not_ want to be pitched down these steps the next time the ship was roughed up a little bit.

At the top of the stairs the ship rolled once more, and CJ only just managed to stop his fall by grabbing the locking wheel on the door and holding on tight while both his legs shot out from under him. He pushed the door open as the ship swung back again and fell out into the corridor beyond, landing hard and bruising the inside of his wrists. He lay on the steel deck for a second, getting his breath back and cursing more or less everything. As he pulled himself upright he wished for just a second he was back home. Not Aberdeen home, but Yorkshire home where the summers lasted forever, where there was music for every golden moment and where golden moments happened so often the music never seemed to stop. Walking to work down a sun-dappled forest path feeling the early morning air breath around him. Hitting a six for the village cricket team on a perfect summer's evening.

_Jenni…_

He lurched on down the empty corridor, pressing one arm against the wall to maintain his balance. The com room was the fifth one along, and as he peered through the little portal set into it and he saw what could only be that wonderful satellite phone plugged into a black re-charging box his hand wrapped unconsciously once more around the rosary at his belt and he grinned like a Cheshire cat.

He pushed the door open, grabbed the phone and typed in the number he knew from memory. He held the phone to his ear, heard a few seconds static as the satellite bounced the signal down to earth and connected to the phone network, and then the sound of ringing.

_Piece of cake_.


	22. A Vision Of Armageddon

Um bolo!

Nothing much to say, apart from it is good to get some reviews, though I have to say it is nice to get some _after all this time_ (hint, hint). Still, cheers for the reviews go to arianin, Dartz-IRL and Rhasa.

_Anyway_ (adopts cheesy American accent and perfect smile), this chapter was brought to you by _American Beauty_ (…look closer), _Aliens vs. Predator_ (Whoever Wins… We Lose), _Red Dwarf IV_ and _The Day After Tomorrow _(Where Will You Be?).

Cheers!

P.S. www.joinme.info

_**R.R.S. James Clark Ross**_

**2.15 P.M, December 1st, 2004**

Captain Marvin was in his cabin, lying on his bunk, trying to catch a few hours sleep he desperately needed before the _James Clark Ross_ entered the broad, violent Atlantic. He knew he had to be as fresh as possible for when they steamed into that war zone of ocean they were heading for. But it wasn't working, and it wasn't the huge swell that was making a concerted effort to sink the ship that wasn't keeping him awake.

In the space of four days three quarters of his crew had died. Three in the mad stampede which now, with the benefit of hindsight, had been a vital warning which everybody had missed. Thirteen when the storm surge had struck – although Marvin was desperately hoping some had been away collecting provisions when it had happened – and washed away to certain death. And now this, five more men and women frozen solid because of his orders. He needed a drink, and right now he would be comfortably on his way to being wasted, if only the bottle of Stolichnaya had not been tossed from the special cradle he had put it in which normally would protect it from rough seas.

He had actually let loose a wail of anguish when he had found out.

So now he couldn't sleep. Instead he had lain in his bunk, braced against the starboard bulkhead and closed his eyes. And then he had opened his eyes when a parade of broken and frozen and drowned faces had marched before him and he had screamed and thrown the mug that always stayed by his bunk – the one bearing the legend **World's Greatest Husband** – against the far bulkhead where it had shattered into a thousand pottery pieces.

Several hours had passed since then, and he had been staring at the ceiling, feeling hours and minutes and seconds slip by as the great Western ocean grew ever nearer. He now let out a huge sigh as a flash of lightning punched through the storm and filled his cabin with harsh blue light. _This is useless_, he thought with a surge of frustration. He swung his legs out of his bunk, picked up the remote control for his wall mounted TV and clicked it on.

BBC News 24 was the first channel on. Tony Blair was addressing Parliament, the caption at the bottom read '**Prime Minister orders evacuation of Northern UK'**. He couldn't hear what the Prime Minister was saying, the volume was down low and the pounding of the ocean drowned out what sound there was. The caption changed to the scientifically inaccurate '**Thousands feared dead in tidal wave**'. Marvin didn't really feel anything about that statement; it was too late for anything like that. He watched for a few minutes without thinking a thing, never really reading the scrolling captions at the foot of the screen which went on and on and on about how the whole atmosphere was being turned inside out, and warning people to run away.

_Too late_, he thought, with some finality. People stuck beneath the storm were dead already, they just didn't know it yet.

Suddenly the picture on screen jogged, as if somebody had just nudged the cameraman. Marvin noticed with some interest the stream of dust and snow that streamed down onto the Prime Minister's head from some unseen place up high in the House of Commons. Both the cameraman and the Prime Minister looked up at the ceiling, and Marvin eyes widened in shock as he saw a hole open up in the ancient roof, letting snow pour through like a waterfall. The hole got wider and huge pieces of timber and tiling tumbled down into the chamber. The camera followed the plummeting debris falling through space, then the screen suddenly went blank and the picture switched back to the BBC anchor, his mouth wide open in disbelief.

Fully alert, yet wishing he wasn't, Marvin sat bolt upright and scrabbled for the remote again. He flicked frantically through the channels, trying to find images from the House chamber. He stopped when he reached FoxNews, and his jaw fell open as far as the BBC anchorman's.

The screen was filled a vision from the end of the world.

Marvin was a music fan. Indeed in the corner of his cabin was a guitar that once upon a time he had played to deal with the stressful position of master of this vessel. He knew what the Capitol Records building in Los Angeles looked like, knew by heart in fact. And what he saw now was that building being chewed up by a tornado. A _tornado!_ It was huge, grey, surrounded by thousands of pieces of swirling debris. As he watched, not really believing, he saw a fire engine, lights flashing, spiralling through the air like a toy, then crashing with a colossal explosion into the street.

Marvin's mind raced. He picked up the phone hung up on the wall next to his bunk, stabbed in a three digit number, and barked "Willis!" as soon as a bleary voice answered the phone.

"Captain?"

"Get up to my cabin right now!"

"Right away."

Marvin slammed the phone back down and turned his attention back to the TV. Some reporter – the caption identified him as Tommy Levinson – was standing in the middle of some LA street, screaming into a microphone and gesturing at the two tornadoes that were tearing into the skyline behind him. Marvin gaped, both of these tornadoes were larger than the one he had seen destroy the Capitol Records building, towering thousands of feet into the sky. The camera panned left and the screen was almost filled by a huge black column, at least a mile wide, ploughing through the skyscrapers of downtown Los Angeles, tearing apart buildings as if they were made of paper.

The camera panned back to the reporter who had just enough time to open his mouth to say something when a huge black rectangle – Marvin didn't see what it was – ripped into the reporter like a blade and carried him away. The screen cut back to the studio anchors, both trying to regain their professional composure and not really succeeding. As the picture changed back to a helicopter shot of the massive tornado, now with several smaller ones zipping across the horizon like sprites in the background, there was a knock on the door.

"Come in," Marvin shouted, never taking his eyes off the TV, seeing flecks of colour that were all that remained of walls and desks and computers and people being sucked into the sky.

"Captain?" Marvin gave a quick glance in the weatherman's direction, barley noting that Willis looked like a man who hadn't slept in twenty-four hours, which was in fact the case.

"Take a look at this, Tony," the captain said, gesturing at the TV, "and tell me what the hell is going on."


	23. The Message

Zdravo! Another chapter! Eagle eyed observers amongst you may have noticed time in the story has suddenly zipped forward several hours.

DON'T PANIC.

This is deliberate, I haven't made a huge continuity cock-up or anything so calm down and keep on R&R'in.

Cheers!

P.S. www.joinme.info

_**R.R.S. James Clark Ross**_

**2.25 P.M, December 1st, 2004**

Chris was watching CJ from his perch on the bed, his back braced against the hull, feeling the hammering blows of the sea every few seconds as the endless procession of waves crashed into the ship. He wasn't feeling sick any more, he was pleased to say. Donna had found him some pills to combat his seasickness in the medical bay, and he had taken a fistful in relief without even thinking. He had started feeling noticeably better within a few minutes, and only then had read the label. It had read **'Causes Drowsiness'**. Wonderful, he thought. These pills knocked you out and he had taken enough to KO a carthorse. Of course he had passed out a few minutes later, which, given what his body had gone through in the past twelve hours or so had been a blessed respite.

When he had woken he was in a darkened room, and yet another unfamiliar ceiling hovered above his eyes. He had tried to get up, and found Donna asleep on his chest. His legs had felt like they belonged to him again, and gently, so as not to wake his sleeping lover, he got to his feet for what felt like the first time in a month.

"Welcome back to the land of the living," a voice had said from the gloom, almost drowned out by a tremendous thunderclap that had filled the room with searing white light. That second of illumination had shown him that they were in a small cabin with two bunks set into the wall, the bottom of which he had been sleeping. There was a built in wardrobe and a sink set into the opposite wall. A few other touches, like a mirror and a tiny desk, completed the sparse furnishings of what was obviously the cabin of a low ranking member of the crew.

The surprise of both the voice and unexpected thunder had caused Chris to jump, and it had been only as his heart had begun to beat again that he had worked out that the voice had been CJ's, who was sitting in the corner, staring out of the porthole into the storm. He was gone in an instant, the pitch darkness of night swallowing him up.

"You're heavier than you look," CJ had said, then remained silent for the next hour until now. Donna still slumbered on the bunk, and occasionally whimpered in her sleep, her smooth face creasing as some remembered fear stalked her dreams. Chris sat with her feet on his lap, watching his flatmate in the darkness, and stroking Donna's lower legs comfortingly whenever the night terrors visited her.

Chris now found that his throat no longer felt like someone had slashed a knife across it, which was a welcome change. In the brief periods since he had lost his voice that he had been able to think properly – such as they were – he had worried that his vocal chords had been damaged beyond repair by their soakings in icy water. He wasn't looking forward to having to communicate via pen and paper for the rest of his life, so after an hour of sitting in the darkness he had opened his mouth and hoped for the best.

"Where are we?" he croaked. _Not bad_, he decided. True he sounded like he needed a fistful of Strepsils before he could talk normally, but it was better than nothing. There was silence from the other side of the room, but it was a contemplative silence, as if CJ was trying to find the best words for the answer.

"Dead crewman's cabin," came the eventual reply.

_If those were the best words_, thought Chris, _then I definitely don't want to hear the worst words_.

"How do you know they're dead?"

"I heard them – the crew – talking about it last night, so when we moved you out of the sickbay I found a cabin that I knew we wouldn't be bothered in."

"Why?"

"Because we aren't very popular on this ship and I want to keep out of everyone's way."

"They can't just toss us overboard."

Chris couldn't see his housemate, but the silence that followed that statement seemed to contain an aura of a raised eyebrow.

"Can they?" he asked.

"You pulled one of their crew over the side," CJ said. "Remember? I think given the shit we're all sinking in nobody would notice if the three of us suddenly vanished. We are a long way from home right now."

"Yeah, but-"

"Shut up!" CJ snapped. "Something has gone hellishly wrong and the normal rules of what's right and wrong stopped applying the moment that fucking tidal wave rolled in so I don't want to hear you bleating on about getting thrown off the ship."

A memory reared in Chris' mind, and coupled with a moment of intuitiveness gave him a flash of inspiration.

"What did Jenni say when you got through to her?" he asked softly. The ship shook around them as it dived head first into a mighty trough in the ocean. It shuddered violently, seeking to haul itself free from the awesome cloak of a million tonnes of water. Lightening filled the cabin, and for a second Chris could see the anguished expression of pain etched on CJ's face, now a monochromatic mask of despair and torture.

"She's snowed in man, she's trapped and she'll never get out"

Chris thought for a second of his own family, on holiday in the Canary Islands, safe and warm, then tried to think of what it would be like stuck beneath a freezing blanket of snow that rose ever higher. He shivered as another tremor rumbled through the hull.

"I got through to her and you wouldn't believe how good it was to hear her speak." CJ was audibly struggling to keep his emotions in check, the pain of his terrible burden now mixing with the potent stress of the last eighteen hours. "And we started off talking like it was just a normal call, like none of this had happened. Then I told her it'd be best if she got out…"

"I think it's a bit late for that," she said, only the slightest hint of anxiety betraying her otherwise jovial demeanour.

"_What?" CJ replied, his heart now starting to beat just a fraction quicker. "Why?"_

"_You know what the roads are like up here when it snows." CJ had to agree on that point. Up near the moors the roads were often single lane affairs that got blocked up by the merest dusting of snow. Plus Jenni's little Fiat hatchback was okay for nipping through city traffic but mostly useless for bulling its way through snowdrifts. Still…_

"_Can't you at least try?"_

"_What's the rush?"_

_CJ wanted to say "You're going to die if you stay there," but he couldn't, he could not even open his mouth to speak. All he did was listen silently as Jenni spoke reassuringly about sitting it out, sitting out the deadliest storm in the history of humanity. He became aware that she had stopped speaking._

"_Hello?"_

"_I love you," CJ said instead of what he was thinking; now trying to remember her voice to take with him wherever he may be going._

"_Love you too," she said, a whisper of static now cutting across the line. _"_I'll see you when this is all over..." _

_I can only hope, __he thought as she hung up the phone._


	24. Captain Marvin Regrets

Dina namona! Yet more chapter…

Enjoy, that is an order.

Cheers!

P.S. www.joinme.info

_**R.R.S. James Clark Ross** _

**8.35 P.M, December 2nd, 2004**

Another day had gone by. Another twenty-four hours wherein _James Clark Ross_ had left the North Sea, left the comparative calm of the English Channel and finally, _finally_, eight hours ago, they had pushed into the Atlantic. And if Marvin had thought that the storm had been rough before he now found out that the hell the broad Atlantic had become was like nothing he had ever known. His knees were stiff and painful from having to constantly bracing them against the wild pitching and rolling the ship was going through.

He was also exhausted, having stayed awake for twenty-four hours on a combination of horror and coffee. BAS H.Q. had gone, swamped when the surge had raised the waters of the channel by fifty feet and flooded the whole south coast, including their home base of Southampton. Now he was alone, with only the last standing orders to go on, and those orders were to get the hell out of town.

And he was happy to follow those orders. It seemed that the whole world was falling down around them. Ever since he had seen the roof collapse at the Houses of Parliament – most of Government was dead apparently – and LA be devastated by huge tornadoes he hadn't dared watch the TV. Tony Willis had come up to the bridge twice to inform him of yet more disasters – one of the towers of Notre Dame had fallen and the eastern seaboard of Canada was being devastated by a surge similar to the one the UK had already experienced – but Marvin hadn't really heard.

For twenty-four hours he had stood on the bridge staring ahead as wave after wave rolled over the foredeck. The power of the sea had already stripped most of it bare, tearing away cranes, lifebelts, the tiny motorboat they used to retrieve sonar buoys. All were gone, ripped aware by the ravenous ocean and swallowed without a trace. For the first time he had seriously doubted their ability to survive. At current speed, nothing more than a few knots in this sea, it would take them four days to get through the Bay of Biscay and far enough south to get out of the area the storm was projected to cover.

Four days. If things didn't calm down soon they would be lucky to see out the next four minutes. He was fatally convinced every time the _James Clark Ross_ was buried by another breaking wave that this would be time that they wouldn't come back up, that this time they would be forced under and drowned forever. He had seen it happen in his time, seen a vessel be swallowed by the sea in less than a blink, and his exhausted mind had convinced him that he and his ship was next.

But he knew that things weren't going to calm down. In all probability, they were going to get worse, so now all he could was stand at his post, and wait for the moment when the fate of him and his crew would be out of his hands. That, and drink endless cups of coffee.

"Captain!" A breathless voice from behind him broke his glum reverie. He turned to see Tony Willis stumbling onto the bridge, clearly having just run up several flights of stairs to get here. Willis was stood before him now, gasping with exertion. He looked about ready to deliver his message when two things happened simultaneously.

Firstly, Willis, who was looking over Marvin's shoulder and out onto the foredeck, gave a gasp of terror and his face suddenly seized up in fear, his eyes as wide as saucers.

Secondly, a screamed word that would live with him the rest of his life, riddled with harmonics of utter, brain-numbing horror. It was Barry Hulme, his helmsman, a grizzled sailor of fifty-five who had seen everything the ocean had to offer, and the one and only word that left his lips was a terrible cry of doom.

"CAPTAIN!"

Once more Marvin whirled around and knew instantly that his life had only a few brief seconds left to it.

It was the most massive wave he had ever seen, easily a hundred feet high, now only a few yards from the bow of the _James Clark Ross_, heading for them head-on, with a truly unstoppable momentum. He stared ahead, paralysed with fear, as a million tonnes of brine teetered over them like the wrath of God.

Hurried footsteps to his left and behind told him Tony Willis and Barry Hulme were making a run for it, but he knew better than to run. There was nowhere to run to. They were finished, it was simple as that.

He closed his eyes as the _James Clark Ross_ shuddered and the wave drove into them and over them and _through_ them. He was thinking of Daisy, and of how things could have been so different if he hadn't…

The windows of the bridge caved in and in less than a heartbeat the walls were torn away. The ocean surged onwards through the guts and arteries of the stricken ship, blasting open doors and knocking through bulkheads as if they were paper. The sound of tearing metal pierced the storm as the upper decks were swept clean of everything in a cacophony of disaster.

The wave passed on after thirty seconds of causing near mortal damage. But by a miracle the _James Clark Ross _had survived, but at a terrible price. She was now drifting helplessly, caught in the teeth of the superstorm two hundred miles from Europe and two thousand from America. Her crew had now been halved in number once again, leaving just seven to hope and pray and struggle they would see out this, the dawning of a new ice age.


	25. The Upper Decks

Sa'benerica! Sputnik here! Betchayall didn't see _that_ coming did you? Well, now Captain Marvin has taken the Long Bath That Needs No Towel I'm gonna tell you what the wave does to everyone else on the ship. Who are the surviving seven? What will happen next to them? I know some of you care… presumably. So all those people who register my story or even me as a Favourite, please review me. I mean, what's the worst thing that can happen? I accept all criticism (such as it is) and praise equally, so don't be worrying about any reprisals or anything, I'm mostly harmless in that respect…

_**I JUST WANT TO KNOW WHAT YOU ALL THINK!**_

Ahem… Anyway, you ignore that chainsaw wielding outburst and do whatever you want.

Anyhoo ladies and gentlemen, this Chapter was brought to you by _King Kong_ (2005 version) and _Wrestlemania's 10 Greatest Matches_.

Cheers!

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_**R.R.S. James Clark Ross**_

**8.36 P.M. December 1st 2004**

There were fifteen people left alive on board the _James Clark Ross_ at the time the monster wave struck. Captain Marvin and Barry Hulme on the bridge were both killed instantly, the latter when he slipped in a frantic dash to survive and was dragged out into the Atlantic before he could even scream, the former remaining at his post until his life had been ended as the bridge was ripped open like a sardine tin

Tony Willis was luckier in one respect, in that he wasn't killed, but he was struck by a surging cataract of water that crashed into him from behind and swept him along half the length of the ship before he could even draw breath. The torrent of freezing water was utterly merciless, propelling him into sharp objects and painfully unyielding bulkheads. He felt his body be wracked by lightning bolts of agony as bones broke and his lungs filled with water. The part of his mind that wasn't scrabbling through his head with panic told him he was going to drown.

He was just beginning to accept this news when a sheet of white light exploded behind his eyes and his entire face became a mask of pain. He had been forced up against something solid. The flow of the surge still battered him from behind, but he was able to surface with a frantic, ecstatic gasp. He looked around, and in the glow of submerged lights which cast a shimmering, milky pallor over everything saw he was about six inches from the ceiling in some unidentifiable corridor, pressed up against a watertight door.

His relief was temporary as he realised that the corridor was about five seconds from being totally submerged as the sea continued to pour in through the ruined bridge and caved-in portholes. He took one last deep breath as the water rose and rose and in an instant reached the ceiling.

Willis looked around, the water was clear except for the blood clouding from his broken nose. The lights in the ceiling and walls allowed him to see everything. But frankly he wasn't sure he wanted to, because he was going to die in something like thirty seconds, and he found himself becoming impatient that it was going to take so long. With nothing else to do and no way out he pressed his fist into the spot just below his ribs and forced himself to inhale.

Water surged into his lungs and Tony Willis just stopped trying, and as his life flashed before his eyes, he suddenly realised that that was what he had done for most of his thirty-one years and he thought simply, "Fuck."

It was then he felt a counter-current tugging violently at his legs. He realised that he was being dragged back down the corridor. He clawed instinctively but blindly, and by sheer luck his grasping hands clutched onto the locking wheel of the watertight door he had been slammed into. He clung on fiercely as the current tried its level best to haul him God knows where.

The water level was dropping around him now. He didn't know why, or even what had happened. All he knew that he was stood in waist-high, icy water clinging with a death-like grip to the door. Blood streamed down his nose as he shivered in a combination of shock and chill, wondering just what the hell was going on.

And so Tony Willis survived. But five men and women sat in the ships lounge watching the storm unfolding around the world were not so lucky. The wave surged in through the door and filled the room in a matter of seconds, and those five men and women were trapped, as their only exit was the door through which the ocean was now surging. Unfortunately for these people, unlike Tony Willis, the water didn't drain in time so these five drowned like rats.

Zoe Monroe was lying in the double bunk she and her late husband Clive had shared until two days ago, wishing that her mind was blank and that her heart was empty of the cold fire of grief. But it was not to be. The pain and anguish she felt had cut off all her other senses, so she merely lay still on her back, not feeling the rolling of the sea or hearing the roar of the storm and the hum of the engines. She barely knew where she was or where they were going. She didn't really even see the ceiling four feet before her eyes. All she could see was scattered clips from her life with Clive. Clive, who was gone forever…

So as it was she never felt the wave hit the ship, didn't hear the roaring and the crashing as it battered and tore its way over them and through them. She never even noticed the light over her head flicker and die. What she did notice however was the icy blue water blast apart the door to her cabin with a sound like a gunshot. She sat bolt upright in fear as it rose above the level of her bed and swamped her.

_Now_ she could see. She could see how fast the water was rising and in pure fear she leapt to her feet into the already waist-deep current. In the glow of the pale emergency lights the saltwater took on a strange, milky luminescence. She noticed this as the water rose to her chest, the power of it very nearly pushing her off her feet. It then occurred to her that she might drown, and without any conscious thought she welcomed this.

But the water got no deeper. Instead it just swirled around her chest, and already she began to shiver, her lungs contracting with the cold. But nonetheless Zoe Monroe survived the wave, and her pain only continued.

And so the ocean surged onwards throughout the ship, and for one more soul on the _James Clark Ross_ their suffering would only pain them for a few more moments.


	26. The Lower Decks

Nazdar! More death and destruction! Will there ever be an end! And just who is Zoe Monroe!

For those of you that have forgotten, she is the wife of the scientist that Chris pulled overboard in Chapter 17 so she is understandably upset but at least she isn't dead, which is more than you can say for most people who have the misfortune to stumble into my story. So, anyway, I said seven people survive the wave, and if you are keeping up, you will see eight are left…

_**SO WHO IS UP FOR THE CHOP NEXT?**_

You have to read on, to find out…

Of course, this chapter was brought to you by _The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy _(Don't Panic), _Red Dwarf VI_ and _Red Dwarf II_.

Cheers!

P.S. www.joinme.info

_**R.R.S. James Clark Ross**_

**8.37 P.M. December 1st, 2004**

It had been Roddy McIntyre and Oliver Cole that had been amongst the first to find the infirmary empty after one whole day. The pair of them had been down in the engineering spaces since they had set out, keeping a close watch on the various leaks that had been patched-up after the _James Clark Ross'_ encounter with the surge in Aberdeen. McIntyre had been awake now for four whole days, Cole for two, and they were both on the way back to their separate bunks for some very well deserved rest.

They had decided that the patches would hold for now, but McIntyre had left the only surviving engineer beside himself to supervise, because he hadn't got where he was today by being incautious. He was thinking that they might be okay, that they might just make it alive from this hell, but he was mostly thinking how he was going to collapse on his bunk and sleep until the sun came out again.

_Whenever that might be_, he thought through the fog of exhaustion.

It was then he heard the pounding of the shoes coming from behind. Both he and Cole turned to see Tony Willis jogging towards them. He came to a halt, breathless.

"The infirmary," he gasped. "Follow me." Without waiting for a reply he turned about and began to jog steadily back the way he had come. McIntyre and Cole shared a glance and began to trot after him.

It dawned on the engineer after a minute that they were following the weatherman to the infirmary and he suddenly remembered the three stowaways the Captain had locked inside. It must have been nearly two days since then, and almost as long since that thought had even crossed his mind. He wondered if the Captain had let them out yet.

When the pair of them caught up with Willis, stood beside the door of the infirmary, now hanging crookedly from one hinge and with the lock splintered, he decided that the answer was probably not. He stood for a second, observing the broken door, knowing without seeing that the infirmary was empty. Finally he spoke.

"Tony," he ordered. "Get up to the bridge, tell the Captain."

"Right, Roddy," Willis said as he turned and left.

"Okay, Ollie, lets find our stowaways."

It didn't take long. Not far from the infirmary were the crew's cabins, and one thing in particular caught McIntyre's attention immediately. Simon Campbell was – _had been_ – one of his junior engineers and had been working on the hull at the time the surge had struck. So, obviously, he was dead. Drowned or smashed to pieces. But wherever he was, he wasn't on the ship, so why was a light showing beneath the door to his cabin? He nudged Cole in the ribs and pointed to the chink of light. Cole nodded with a grin.

Slowly, carefully McIntyre reached for the door handle. So intent he was on his task he never felt the ship shudder hard as the rogue wave struck. Instead he just pushed open the door, saw for a moment the heads of the three stowaways swing their faces towards him in shock. The woman, dressedincongrously in a purloined white t-shirt and camouflaged combat pants, leapt up from the bunk to her feet, causing the blond-haired man with his head asleep on her lap to fall to the floor as he was suddenly woken up. The other man, sat in the far corner with his knees drawn up to his chest, fixed his eyes on the engineer expressionlessly and looked to be about to say something when the woman beat him to it.

"This isn't what it looks like," she said, moving towards McIntyre and blocking his entry to the cabin.

"Oh I'm sure," he replied.

He had barely registered the lights all around him flickering when he heard the crash as the door at the end of the corridor was blasted off its hinges by a surge of brilliant blue water. His eyes widened with fear as the cataract bore down on him and Cole, and it was by pure instinct and nothing else he was able to grab hold of the doorframe in front of him before the roaring water crashed into his body. The current tore at his legs as he clung on desperately. For one second he thought he was going to make it, when suddenly the woman was dragged bodily from the cabin and straight in to him.

For what felt like an eternity his fingers clutched frantically at thin air as they were torn free, then his world was filled with noise and cold and pain and chaos as he was whisked off down the corridor. He fought furiously to keep his head above water, thrashing his arms and kicking like a mule.

He suddenly felt like he was falling, but he was by now so disorientated that he hadn't the faintest clue what was happening. All he knew was that his throat had filled with water and that there was an almighty burning pain trying to burst out from his chest. And now there was nothing beneath his feet and he was definitely falling. He decided, distantly, that this was what drowning must be like…

Then with an impact like a train driving into a mountain he hit something. Something hard. He opened his eyes to find his back pressed against a bulkhead with chest-high water flowing away to his left down another passageway. He gasped with cold and breathlessness, dripping and shivering and with no real idea as to where the hell he was or what had happened. All he knew was that he was at the foot of some stairs down which cascaded a waterfall of pure blue seawater.

Suddenly he saw a dark shape rushing limply down the stairs towards him. A flash of trailing blond hair told him that the body was that of the woman. He automatically thrust out his hands and grabbed hold of her before she could be taken away to the depths of the ship. He held her in his arms and looked around involuntarily for help, of which there was none.

He looked down at her face, lolling backwards unsupported. He noticed her skin was pale and pinched, her long blond hair clinging to his arm and the very tips of it trailing forlornly in the current. She looked dead, he had seen drowning before and it was never, ever pretty.

Mercifully she coughed once, twice, water pouring out over blue lips. She moaned softly, then much louder as she came around and felt the pain in what McIntyre could see was a clearly broken left arm. His stomach rose as he saw the bone pressing against the skin of her exposed upper arm. The woman's moan changed to a wail, and finally to a raw-throated scream of shock and agony. She began to shake wildly in his grasp, and his voice joined hers as he cried for help, their calls echoing throughout the dying _James Clark Ross_.

-

The last member of the crew to die was also the youngest. Twenty-year-old Paul David was an apprenticed engineer onboard the _James Clark Ross_. He had been the one assigned to keep an eye on the ship's battered hull, to prevent any leaks becoming fatal. He was tired, and cold. He had tried not to nod off, but he had slumped gratefully into a seat at a console and, lulled by the monotonous pounding of the engines had finally succumbed to the sweet lure of sleep.

He was woken – briefly – as a five-foot high surge of water blasted into him. The cold shocked him instantly awake, and he found his feet and began looking for a way out. He thrashed through the water towards the hatch on the aft bulkhead, struggling with every step to keep his footing. So focussed he was he didn't even notice it was closing until it was halfway shut. He let out at a despairing wail and doubled his efforts. Now far less careful he pushed on, fear powering his body. Despite this, the last thing he ever saw was the hatch sliding to a close as the surge whipped his feet away, dragged him under, and drowned him…


	27. Drawing Breath

Arru! Well, wasn't _that_ exciting? Don't know about you but I'm bloody knackered, and not just because it took me a better part of a month to write the previous chapter and my agent has instructed me to apologise.

Sorry. Blame a combination of writer's block and longer hours at my gorrammed place of employment. Anyway, there is a reason this chapter is called '_Drawing Breath_', because me, you and the surviving seven characters damn well need to. Also, I promise on my Iron Maiden album collection that the next chapters will come out far faster because I _know_ what will happen next. In fact I have everything from where we are now to pretty much the end (and, for those of you interested, that's where Sam, Jack, Laura – very briefly, heh, heh, heh – and others pop up) all mapped out and even beyond that into the sequel. (Actually now I think about it, Sam has quite a big part in the sequel, in fact he gets one of the lead roles. Laura however, is not so lucky, heh, heh, heh again).

So here we go, its pedal to the metal and no sleep til Hammersmith from here…

Hang on tight.

Cheers!

P.S. www.joinme.info

**_R.R.S. James Clark Ross_**

**8.40 P.M. December 2nd, 2004**

Chris looked around the cabin. What had been a few minutes ago a welcoming place of refuge was now a vision of a freezing hell. They were knee high in blue, icy water. He wasn't sure what had just happened. One second they had all felt the warm stab of fear as they had been discovered, then next were just a jumbled series of images. The shock of being woken up as the door was kicked open. The guilty stab of seeing one of the crew framed in the doorway. The beginnings of the instinct to pull Donna to safety when something unnaturally loud exploded just up the corridor. The wall of water blasting into the cabin and throwing him back against the far bulkhead…

Now as he pulled himself to his feet, the scene was changed horrifyingly. The door was resting against the bunk where he had been dozing moments before and now wallowing in lapping water. He pushed a strand of soaked hair out from his eyes then sloshed over to CJ who was trying without much success to pull a man clear out of the water. As Chris got closer he could see the man was one of the crew. He had a deep gash in his forehead that was pumping out an alarming amount of blood. CJ looked up sharply at Chris as he struggled with his burden.

"Don't just stand there," he snapped. "Help me get this guy on the bunk."

Dumbly Chris grabbed hold of the man's legs and together the two housemates hauled him onto the bunk. Water lapped at him but at least now he wouldn't drown. Maybe he would die of hypothermia, but he wasn't going to drown…

_Donna_.

She wasn't there. He couldn't believe that he hadn't noticed!

"Donna?" he shouted, stupidly. "Donna, where are you?" He cast a glance at CJ who scrupulously avoided his gaze. "Did you see what happened to her?" he asked accusingly.

"Yeah," CJ mumbled, looking sickly in the pale glow of the emergency lights.

"Where is she then?"

CJ didn't reply, he just nodded in the direction of the door, out into the passageway down which a torrent of knee-high water ran. Chris didn't even think before he splashed out of the cabin.

"You goddamned fuckin' idiot," CJ muttered to his friend's back, before he too went out into the corridor and followed his flatmate downstream.

Chris strode ahead, splashing through the fast flowing icy water, cold and panic keeping his breath rapid and thready. All around him the sounds of the sea and the storm racked the wounded ship. He felt sick with worry and confusion and fragments of questions tore through his mind, and all he could do was snatch at them as he thrashed down the corridor.

_What had happened? What was going on? Where was Donna?_

"Donna!"

The lights around him flickered, plunging the passageway into darkness twice, causing Chris to stumble blindly on, powered only by instinct. Presently the two of them came up to a t-junction. The current was going right, and Chris was turning in that direction when a powerful hand clamped down on his shoulder.

"We don't if she's down that way mate," CJ said. Chris noted the set of his housemate's jaw, which suggested that he was trying hard to stop his teeth chattering.

"We can't search everywhere," Chris said with a hint of panic rising in his voice.

"We can but try," CJ replied. "Look, I'll go left, you go right and we'll meet up here in ten minutes."

"Right."

"Good. Now don't die." CJ flashed a half-hearted smile. "We still owe this month's rent to Mrs McKay."

Chris didn't hear that limp wisecrack. He was already splashing down the passage away from his housemate, following the current and half wishing he knew some prayers because by now he was beyond desperate.

"Donna!" he shouted above the sound of rushing water and the roaring storm. Of course there was no answer. It occurred to him that there never would be answer. That the love of his life had been swept away to her death in this steel coffin and _how was he going to go on? Oh God oh God oh God oh God oh Godddddd…_

"Donna!" he cried again, his voice rising in pitch and then cracking with grief. He stumbled on, strobing emergency lights very nearly destroying his vision. It became so hard to see in fact that he didn't notice the flight of stairs until he came within one step of pitching headlong down them.

He hesitated at the top, water streaming past him in a waterfall down the darkened stairwell. It was pitch black down there and it was a patently foolish idea to head down them. But there had been no turnoffs or doors from the passageway he had followed. If Donna had been washed this way, then she was down there…

He swallowed hard and keeping a firm grip on the stair rail he slowly began inching his way down the torrent. He discovered almost instantly that this plan was incredibly stupid. The stairs were like ice, offering absolutely no purchase for his borrowed trainers. He had only taken three steps when he lost his footing entirely and his feet shot out from under him, dropping him painfully down onto the steps. Legs flailing in panic he solidified his grip on the rail, his heart thumping fearfully.

He hauled himself back upright, willing the air back into his winded lungs. He was just regaining his composure and preparing to start down once more when with a sudden BANG everything around him was lit by bright white emergency lights. He gasped as his eyes were overloaded by this unexpected sensory assault.

And what came next was just as sudden. A scream, a true full-throated wail of abject agony. And it was Donna's. He didn't need any more encouragement. Without another thought he half-slid, half-fell the rest of the way down the stairs, finding himself at the bottom in another passageway flooded to chest height. And just a moment later he saw the source of the scream and then it wasn't just the cold that stilled his heart…


	28. At The Helm

Guten Tag! Well, provided youse all haven't given up on me, here I am, back again. Not much to say really, you can all speculate as to why I haven't posted for a while, and you can speculate all you like, I'm remaining schtum on the matter. Anyhow, this chapter was brought to you by _V For Vendetta_.

Cheers!

P.S. www.joinme.info

_**R.R.S. James Clark Ross**_

**9.15 P.M. December 2nd, 2004**

Thirty-five minutes later the seven survivors of the wave were all together in the infirmary. CJ had stumbled across Dr Zoe Monroe, huddled on her bunk with a thousand yard stare that had freaked him out inordinately. It had taken him the better part of five minutes of soothing words to even get her to take her eyes from some invisible point several miles beyond his right shoulder. It had taken another ten minutes of incredibly repetitive reassurance that strained his patience to its habitually limited – ha – limit. He had resisted the urge to slap the almost catatonic woman across her face a few times. It worked for his dad after all…

Shouting had apparently worked. She had finally focused on him and while she didn't actually appear to be entirely all at home he had finally got her to her feet and back to the infirmary. He had noticed as her lead her through badly lit passageways that the water level had dropped discernibly. Now it merely lapped around their ankles, but to two people utterly soaked to the bone wearing clothes suited to – at best – lounging around a roaring fire in some alpine log cabin that didn't make things any less cold. CJ was beginning to seriously regret not being fat. He recalled for a second the story of a lardy Norwegian (probably) sailor whose ship had sunk beneath him into the icy waters of the North Sea, and had survived simply because he was such a fat bastard.

"Bastard…" CJ had muttered as he continued to drag the zombie-like Zoe through suddenly endless passageways whilst all the time trying to keep his balance as the decking rolled beneath his feet. He remembered that the sound of the storm and the sea had sounded far louder and he wondered why now as he stood in the infirmary watching Donna Phillips thrash in agony as Chris and Tony Willis tried to pin her down and let Roddy McIntyre splint her badly broken arm. He was busily taping a compress to the ugly gash on Oliver Cole's forehead whilst Zoe Monroe was sat opposite him, still staring into space in a way that would be deeply worrying and highly disturbing to CJ if he had been playing her the slightest bit of attention.

Another piercing shriek filled the room and reached over the crashing of the sea rolling over the _James Clark Ross_. CJ noticed with some concern McIntyre look around with worry whilst still trying to pin down his hysterical friend.

There was one huge scream, which made CJ's stomach turn and then he heard McIntyre's thick Glaswegian voice shout "The morphine! Now!" and he felt a surge of relief as Donna's screams melted into moans and then gasps as the opiate flooded her bloodstream.

"Oh thank Christ," CJ muttered as the screams went away and he applied the final strip of tape to the compress.

"Cheers, pal," Cole said, a mixture of pain and painkillers dulling his eyes.

"I'm no first aider, mister," CJ joked uneasily.

"If I croak I know who to blame."

"Is that likely?"

Cole looked up at McIntyre who was saying soothing things with his mouth to Donna and radiating panic with the rest of his face.

"After what just happened to us all?" Cole's grin was laced with black humour. "You really don't want to know."

CJ leaned in closer, keeping his voice low. "We gonna sink?"

"Hope you can swim, son." Cole's eyes closed and he leaned back against the workstation he was propped up on.

"Better n' I can drown," CJ muttered to himself.

"Right," McIntyre said, standing straight. "If you all want to make it out of this alive, this is what we are going to have to do…"

… And so it was fifteen minutes later Christopher John David Greenough found himself in sole command of six thousand tons of British research vessel. He was stood on the torn open bridge of the _James Clark Ross_, genuinely afraid that he would be swept away if he loosened his grip even one iota. The bridge was now open to the elements and he could barely see beyond the torn steel of the remaining walls. He was frankly petrified, and the engineer McIntyre screaming instructions into his ear didn't help.

So this was the plan that was to save their lives. _Fucking genius_, he thought. There were seven people left alive on this ship. Donna had very nearly had her arm broken off; she was no help to anybody. That Zoe woman was practically comatose, and the sailor he had patched up – Cole – was probably concussed and likely out of action for the foreseeable future. That left himself and Chris, who knew nothing about sailing, boats, the sea or storms like this, and McIntyre and Willis, to _steer this damned ship to safety!_ And of course one of them had to be in the infirmary at all times to look after the wounded.

And from what he could gather, Willis was just a weatherman anyway and probably didn't know a whole lot more than he did. And soon not even McIntyre would be here, once he was satisfied (so he said) that CJ and Chris had mastered exactly enough to not sink them all then he was going down to the engineering deck and start work on pumping out the flooded compartments.

To tell the truth it wasn't all that hard. All he had to was keep one eye on the readout on the console before him. It told him what direction he was steering, and provided he kept the ship on a heading of ninety degrees – due west – then with any luck they wouldn't sink. They couldn't head south, said McIntyre, putting the ship broadside onto the wind and the waves. The _James Clark Ross_ was so battered and waterlogged that they couldn't do anything that stupid and simply take the fastest route from under the storm without being driven to the bottom of this storm-wrecked ocean.

So now, here he was, driving a ship with, temporarily – Willis had insisted nobody could stay on the exposed bridge for more than an hour – the lives of himself and six other people in the palm of his hand.

_Oh God I wish I was home_…


	29. The Promise

Assalamu äläykum! Sputnik again. Sorry if the last chapter was a little light on action – that it what is called exposition. Also I am sorry if you happen to be fat and that little rant offended you – that is what is called character. You may not realise it but every word or action or even _inaction_ can reveal the personality of the characters.

My! Where did that come from? Must be cos I haven't had a drink today. Still, try and guess what happens next and feel free to email me if you think you know. By the way I have four chapters of the sequel written. Basically what happens is hiuwrheinawuerwakjrjije,q wauhge892074ydw98-234qoeimfa.

Ha! No chance ladies and gentlemen! You'll just have to stick with me.

Anyway this chapter was brought to you by _Family Guy Season 4_, and _Anchorman: The Legend Of Ron Burgundy_,

Cheers!

P.S. www.joinme.info

_**R.R.S. James Clark Ross**_

**10.32 P.M. December 2nd, 2004**

First the rubber drysuit, so tight he could honest to God feel the blood be vacuumed into his hands and feet. Then the two layers of thermal leggings, four different woollen sweaters, then the yellow waterproof trousers and fur-lined jacket, the hood of which had to pulled over the drysuit to give him two layers over his head.

"I can hardly move," Chris said, half-falling and half-sitting back down onto the bunk in a damp cabin. Tony Willis grinned as best he could with a broken nose and handed him a pair of rubber sea boots. "Is this really necessary?"

"Yesterday morning, five of the crew went outside wearing just what you are wearing now, and they were all dead inside of two hours." Tony Willis looked stern, even with a bruised and swollen face.

"Not good."

Willis sighed and appeared to be staring into space. "This is the worst weather the Atlantic can throw at us, so no, its not good."

Chris looked out of the cabin door, across the passageway, to where Donna was lying strapped to a bed in the infirmary. He could see from here how pale she was, and he resolved himself once more.

"Gotta do it," he muttered. "Gotta do it."

"You had better do it," Willis said, splashing back into the infirmary through the inch of icy water that still remained on the deck. "Or we're all dead."

_Do you honestly think I can make a difference? _Chris asked silently to the departing weatherman's back. He tried to calm his mind as he pulled on his boots, but all he could feel was a whirling storm of fear that echoed the one raging all around them. He didn't want to know the answer to his question because deep down he knew they were all finished. He didn't know much about boats, or the sea, or this storm, but some deep primordial part of his brain was telling him that the ship was too damaged, the sea too wild, the storm too crazed for them to survive.

All he could think about was drowning. After being physically sick, nothing filled him more with the cold fire of dread than the thought of death by drowning. As he tightened the straps on his boots he was assaulted by images of icy grey water filling his world. Of freezing needles of brine reaching down his throat and squeezing his lungs tight. As far as he could tell in the past few days he had been clinically dead twice, and he took some grain of comfort from the fact that the rest of his life – which would probably be perpetually plagued by the sight of the sea closing over his head – was only going to be the next few hours.

_What am I thinking?_ He didn't want to die. Sure, before Donna had brought the colour back into life, he honestly felt like he wanted to die. He still had the faint scars on his arms from where he had actually been miserable enough to try and achieve that. It was why he never wore a t-shirt anymore, especially within range of CJ and his barbed comments. CJ was scornful of self-harmers, ever since he been clinically depressed following his father's death from cancer. Once he had recovered he had decided – incorrectly in Chris' opinion – that it all had been in his head, and the best medicine was a bullish, arrogant and fairly unpleasant approach to more or less everything.

_Or so he said_, Chris had met Jenni once, when she had visited Aberdeen the previous April. She had only been up for a weekend but that had been enough time to figure out a) she liked a drink and b) she would take no shit from anybody, CJ included. So maybe it was all an act, or maybe CJ was just totally different with Jenni than with everyone else in the world.

Now he, he knew for certain, had no hidden depths. He didn't have the emotional armour to hide his true character. His true character was telling him they were all going to die, and die in the worst way in the world.

But until then, he was going to do his best, and although he knew it would not be good enough, there was nothing more he could do. Plus, it would keep him occupied until they sank. He locked off the last strap as a figure came into the doorway.

"Your turn at the crease pal," Tony Willis said from beneath the fur-lined hood of his parka.

A hero would say "I'm a football man, myself," or "I'll hit 'em for six." At the very least a hero would crack a wiseass grin.

"You mind if I see Donna first?" he said instead, swallowing hard to stop the rising, burning sensation at the back of his throat. He saw Willis' face crumple.

"Two minutes won't hurt too much more."

"Cheers."

Chris stood up awkwardly, his movements hampered by the bulky Artic gear. He splashed into the infirmary, was briefly unnerved by the statue-like Dr Monroe and the bloody Cole, and then felt his heart plummet to meet his rising stomach as his eyes lit on the motionless form of his lover strapped to the bed. Donna was grey in the face, dark circles ringing her eyes. Her arm was held rigid by an inflatable splint, but Chris could see blood soaking the bandage wrapped tight against her skin. She was conscious, but half insensible from pain and morphine.

"Hello," she croaked through lips that were dry as a desert. He pulled off one of his gloves and took her good hand in his.

"Hi there," he tried, his mouth suddenly dry.

"Where are you going?"

"Not far. I'm helping on the bridge." He felt his stomach contract painfully.

"Is that… is that a good idea?"

_Say something positive_ he thought frantically.

"Yes."

"Oh good…" Donna's voice tailed off into nothing as her eyes closed and she lost consciousness. Standing over her, Chris made a decision as he pulled his hand free from hers. He bent down until his lips were an inch from her ear.

"I will get you out of this. I promise."

And this time, maybe he meant it. Because if he was lying, then Donna was dead.


	30. The Body

Yiem longx! It's me again (as if it would be anyone else) with yet _another _chapter of this Magnificent Octopus (ask your dad). And yes, I know time has jumped forward a few days. It's a noble tradition and perfectly legal, I even think there's a technical term for it that escapes me at this precise moment. Anyway, it saves me having to write reams and reams of unnecessary filler, which saves my fingers and stops you being bored.

Anyway this chapter was brought to you by _Poseidon_ (2006), _The Day After Tomorrow_ and _Scrubs: Season 1_.

Cheers!

P.S. www.joinme.info

**R.R****.S. James Clark Ross**

**11.15 A.M, December 5th, 2004**

Oliver Cole was dead.

CJ had staggered into the heated infirmary – the one room where most of the heating had been diverted – where Chris spent all his free waking hours watching over the unconscious Donna. He was – as he was every time he finished another hour up on the bridge at the helm of six thousand tons of ship – soaked to the bone, exhausted beyond imagination and almost wishing he were selfish enough to kill himself. But he wasn't, so he pushed himself, and pressed treacherous thoughts of jumping overboard to the back of his mind.

Also drowning was his least favourite way of shuffling off the mortal coil. The thought of water filling his throat and lungs until his chest burst was enough to provide sufficient nightmares to last a lifetime – however long that was. As he dragged his weary carcass into the infirmary, with it's distressing smell of pain and death and the constant fug of damp clothing which had permeated the ship, he reflected that it had been a miracle that they had all lasted this long. What was required to deliver them all to the safety of the southern ocean? How much longer could their luck hold out?

So, Chris was stood over Donna, holding her clammy, cold hand in his. Tony Willis was up on the bridge, doing his hour of good service. Chief McIntyre was presumably still down in the bowels of the ship. Zoe Monroe was still sat, staring into space, and Oliver Cole was slumped where CJ had propped him up several hours ago. CJ had stripped off the 'waterproof' parka and sallopets and hung them up to dry before he noticed the streams of fresh blood that had poured out of Cole's ears.

Without thinking he was on his knees of the deck next to Cole. Now he could look closely he could see the paleness of the sailor's face, the utter stillness of his body. Not really expecting much he reached out and grasped his shoulder. There was no reaction from Cole; he may have well laid his hand on a statue. He pushed gently and slowly, with barely a sound Oliver Cole slid sideways to the deck, dead as a stone and fresh rivulets of blood running from his ears and now his nose.

"Jesus Christ!" he yelled, falling onto his backside and sliding backwards away from the body. The shock and fear in his voice was sufficient to pull Chris' attention away from his comatose lover.

"What?" Chris sounded annoyed. Tired but annoyed.

"How long has he been dead?" CJ challenged, anger fuelled within him by the petulance in Chris' voice.

"Dead? What?"

"He's dead! Look at him!"

Reluctant to leave Donna's side, Chris shuffled across from the bed, bracing himself once against a particularly vicious roll. When he got close to the sprawled body his mouth dropped in a way that would be comical in any other situation.

"I, uh, didn't see a thing." He stood awkwardly, eyes fixed on the blood that ran from Cole's ears.

CJ thought of shouting and ranting at Chris for letting this man die, but then he saw the wounded form of Donna on the bed and saw Jenni instead, and he knew that in all honesty, _he _would have probably not noticed somebody dying just feet away. In an instant he swallowed the red ball rising in his chest and calmed down.

"Yeah," he sighed.

"What was it?"

"Hm?" CJ, distracted for a moment by Cole's stiff blue hands, now looking remarkably like fat, dead spiders, glanced back up at Chris.

"What killed him?"

"Dunno. You'd need Burnie to answer that." Burnie was – _had been_ – a medical student in the same halls as them in their first year at University. "I think a vessel might have burst in his head or something. I mean, look at all this blood." CJ hauled himself to his feet, pushing wet hair away from his forehead as he stood.

"His brain exploded," Chris said in awe.

"Something like that." CJ looked around at nothing very much.

"We have to tell McIntyre."

"I don't think even Chief Engineers are qualified to bring people back from the dead."

"I still think he'd wanta know."

"Count me out," CJ said. "I nearly killed trying to find my way through this place, but if you want to navigate five decks of a half-flooded ship to tell McIntyre that this man is dead then be my guest."

"I'm not leaving Donna unless I have to," Chris said defensively.

"Then don't. McIntyre will find out in his own sweet time." CJ made a move to the door, stifling a yawn as he did so. "Now I'm going to get some sleep before I pass out."

"Have fun," Chris muttered, returning his gaze to Donna.

CJ strode away, and managed to get to the door before the guilt stopped him and made him look back over his shoulder.

"Listen, you can't stay here every waking hour. You haven't slept at all since all this started, I mean apart from all the bits where you were unconscious…" He tailed off, aware that this wasn't the place for humour. "I'll stay, if you want to get some kip."

"No."

CJ's expression didn't change but his guilt evaporated. He was tired, soaking wet and thoroughly not in the mood for Chris acting like a big stupid baby who'd just had his dummy taken from him…

"Fine."

There was no answer as he slouched across the passageway and into the cabin opposite. He hauled his aching body onto the top – and crucially _dry_ – bunk and lay on his back facing the ceiling. He tried not to think of Jenni, now almost certainly dead and buried beneath the worst storm in human history. He failed miserably, feeling the anguish rising from his heart, and he did what he always did when he felt like this.

He turned it into anger.

"FUCK!" he screamed, tensing all the muscles in his body at once. He always did this as a defence reaction to grief ever since his dad died two years previously, and although he knew it was counterproductive it always felt _really good_. But at the end of the day he should really get sorted by going to sleep…

But she was going to die… 


	31. Battery

Hello! I have absolutely nothing to say other than this chapter was brought to you by _Scrub: Season 1, Scrubs: Season 2,_ _Scrubs: Season 3, Scrubs: Season 4, Family Guy: Season 5_, _Red Dwarf I _and many, many games of solitaire (in Vegas mode, you won't believe how deep in the red I am. I mean seriously, I have a bigger debt in this thing than the USA).

God this was hard this time.

Cheers!

P.S. www.joinme.info

P.P.S. This is the last ever Author's Notes. Because I take my suggestees seriously.

**_R.R.S. James Clark Ross_**

**11.32 A.M, December 5th, 2004**

Chris was trying his very best to ignore the corpse CJ had left in the corner of the infirmary. He was mostly failing, even while running his hand through Donna's long hair he could still sense the cold stare of the body boring into his back, like a pair of icy blue laser beams.

He'd never had a dead body staring at him before. In fact, he had never even seen a dead body. Not even in the last week with all that had been going on and all that he had been through. He had seen people who were _about_ to die; Kathy, for instance. Or Oliver Cole. Chris had seen Cole alive, and now he was seeing him dead, limbs lolling on the floor in time to the rocking of the ship.

_I really ought to do something about that_, he thought. _Tie him up, perhaps._ But then his stomach rolled at the thought of handling _it_ and he just tried to forget about everything except Donna who was lying (_dying_) here before him.

There was a soft thud as Cole fell over from his sitting position.

Chris wheeled around accusingly.

"_STAY STILL YOU BASTARD!"_ he screamed.

Cole's pale face ignored him implacably as Chris looked back down at Donna guiltily, convinced he had woken her up with his slightly irrational rant. He hadn't, and in his relief he turned and pierced _the dead body_ with yet another poisonous glare.

"_WHAT DID YOU SAY TO HIM?"_

Chris jumped violently at the voice ringing out suddenly behind him. It was a woman's voice. An exhausted voice, shot through with grief, pain, and anger. The hairs rose on the back of his neck. He really, _really_, did not want to turn around and face the source of that voice. But he did anyway, slowly and with a great deal of reluctance.

Dr Zoe Monroe was stood rigid, all trace of the catatonia that had gripped her gone. Her eyes blazed with fury and Chris shrank before that gimlet gaze. In his entire life he had never felt so much like a rabbit in the headlights, not even the sight of a fifty-foot wall of water towering over him had frozen his blood quite like this woman's burning stare. He opened his mouth to speak, then realised that all the spit had dried up in his mouth.

"Gah," he said. The furious apparition before him appeared not to notice this.

"He's dead and you talk to him like that! Who do you think you are to come onto our ship and kill our crew and –"

CJ's head appeared around the doorframe.

"Hey," he began. "You woke me up what's the –"

Dr Monroe cut him off with a voice like a whipsaw.

"_SHUT UP!!_" she screeched. CJ looked startled and to Chris' secret amazement actually took a step back. He recovered quickly and walked into the infirmary.

"Okay, I think everyone needs to calm down here," he tried.

"Everyone?" Chris asked, throwing a wide-eyed nod in the direction of Zoe, who was flushed and breathing heavily, her shoulders bunched and tense.

"Well," he addressed Zoe now. "You."

Dr Monroe began striding towards CJ, apparently in her fury having forgotten Chris – and how he had killed her husband – for the time being. Secretly, in the part of his mind that wasn't a mad combination of panic and guilt, he felt relief that this crazy harpy wasn't about to be unleashed on him, and also because he was extremely unsure of just how ready he was to lay out a recently widowed, probably half-insane woman.

"How _dare_ you," Zoe started, spitting venom with every syllable, now pushing her face within inches of CJ's.

"Please calm down," CJ said reasonably.

"Don't tell me what to d –"

Chris' eyes became as wide as saucers as without another second's thought CJ slugged Dr Zoe Monroe directly on the jaw with a stiff, clearly oft-used jab right to her cheek. Zoe let out one surprised grunt then hit the ground dead like a sack of potatoes.

"Holy shit," CJ whistled, shaking his fist painfully. "I didn't think that would actually work."

"You hit her!" Chris exclaimed, his voice rising several octaves in shock.

"She was about to yank my eyes out pal! And I don't think this is the time or place for a sit down with some tea and digestive biscuits!"

Chris was lost for words. "You hit her!" he tried again.

"Yes I did," CJ said ruefully, subsiding as he peered at his now-bruised knuckles. "Now help me find some bandages."

"You can't be that hurt," Chris scoffed.

"Not for me, for her," CJ muttered as he began rooting through draws, stepping over Zoe's unconscious body as he did so.

"You are unbelievable. First you knock out an unarmed woman then you want to fix her up."

"I don't want to fix her up. I want to _tie_ her up."

Chris' jaw fell again.

"She's mental pal, I don't want her flying off the handle when she wakes up from this little nap. Now get down off your high horse and help me find some fookin' bandages."

Chris marvelled for a second at how CJ's usually subdued Mancunian accent had suddenly become incredibly prominent, and then began his own search for bandages.

"Bingo!" CJ cried, brandishing a four-inch thick roll of bandages. "Now help me turn her on her front and pin her wrists together."

There was a long pause.

"Do you want to secure her or just rape her?"

"Don't ask me how I know how to do this, just shut up and help." Chris held Zoe Monroe down as CJ swiftly bound her arms and legs then lashed her to one of the steel supports of the counter that ran along one side of the infirmary.

"This is sick," Chris muttered.

"Quiet," CJ snapped, deftly gagging Zoe. He stood up, wincing as both his knees clicked. "Now I'm off to bed. _Again_."

"You're leaving?" Chris was stupefied at CJ's behaviour.

"I'm knackered. I think I mentioned that earlier."

"But you can't just go! What happens when the others get back? I don't know if you've noticed this unconscious woman and that _dead FUCKING **BODY**!!_" Chris could not remember being this angry in years, but later on he could barely recall this moment at all, and what CJ said next was probably why.

"We've already had this argument," came the exhausted reply. "We'll cross that bridge when we get to it." And with that he walked, shoulders slumped, out of the infirmary.

"'Cross that bridge…'" Chris muttered. "Oh dear God you idiot McIntyre is gonna throw us overboard…"


	32. The Superfreeze

_**R.R.S. James Clark Ross**_

**11.52 A.M, December 5th, 2004**

Tony Willis was on the bridge, casting alternate glances between the wheel in his hands, the watch on his wrist and the jagged shards of twisted metal which were all that remained of the bridge walls of the _James Clark Ross_. Through those fantastically contorted sheets of steel the storm kept on coming in and freezing his very core solid. All he could do was hang on and try and keep the bow of the ship pointing into the teeth of the wind and sea, and he was approaching the limits of his endurance.

Though his vision was obscured by screaming wall of the blizzard, and occasionally overwhelmed by sheets of lightning that seemed to melt all the snow in one horizon-spanning flash, he could still make out the tumultuous ocean. Huge waves, a mile in length from crest to crest rolled and crashed and tore the world to pieces. He could see that the mountainous walls of brine had stripped the foredeck clean of everything, cranes, davits, a radar array, walkways, steel stairs, absolutely everything. It had even forced open two watertight doors and flooded most of C Deck before he and McIntyre had been able to seal off the area.

McIntyre was close to collapse the last time he had seen him. The Chief Engineer had still not slept a wink since the whole thing had begun, and now appeared to be surviving on an almost constant supply of ProPlus tablets. He had been surveying the battered hull of the _James Clark Ross_, finding out which sections were flooded, and trying his best to get them cleared of water. In many cases it was impossible, where the ship had been torn open to the sea there was no pump in the world that could hope to keep out a billion tons of ravenous ocean. In other sections the pumps had been knocked out by the force of that hundred-foot monster which had very nearly crippled them, and he could not get them repaired despite his best efforts.

The _James Clark Ross_ was now a warren of cut-off passageways and flooded rooms. Whole sections of the engineering spaces were flooded, forcing McIntyre into a long detour that actually took him out onto the exposed deck to bypass the flooded area – actually a section between two bulkheads three decks high that had effectively cut the ship in two. The ship was a death trap, and now Willis was just one step away from giving up the whole enterprise as a bad idea and jumping overboard.

He done numerous tours in the Antarctic on the _Ross_, he had seen what she could take, and he knew that this was far, far worse. And to compound it all the ship was grievously hurt, limping through a storm that was less weather than it was a war. Even under normal circumstances, with the _James Clark Ross_ the way it was, torn-up and half-flooded, they would have turned for home long ago, or even better waited for a tow back to safety. But now there was no home, there would be no tow. They had no options but the one they were taking now, and frankly that was no option at all.

_Well_, Willis thought grimly, _it was better than nothing_. If they hadn't left Aberdeen when they did, then they never would have. Right now the ship and all her crew would doubtless be frozen solid or buried beneath tons and tons of snow and ice. He, Tony Willis, with the early warning – well, the earliest warning he could give – had at least given them all a fighting chance. And now, even with the odds stacked high against them, he was keeping that chance alive. All he had to do was keep at the wheel, surely only for a few more days, and then they would be out from under this murderous storm and be safely on their way.

_Rio sounded nice this time of year_, he thought. Somewhere not cold, that was for sure. If there was anything left of the British Antarctic Survey left when this was all over, then he was handing in his notice in the first available post.

He smiled beneath the scarf that shrouded his mouth and nose at that little bit of grim humour. He knew he had to keep laughing. He was only living through the end of the world after all; if he didn't keep laughing he would most likely lose his mind.

It was then he realised he could actually hear himself laughing. This was odd, because so far the noise of the storm on the exposed bridge meant he couldn't hear anything louder than a shout. But now it was definitely quieter. Sure the sea was still roaring, but with not nearly so much volume and, unbelievably, the scream of the gale was almost gone.

_What the hell…?_

He looked up, out towards the mountainous sea and his mouth fell open in shock. It seemed as if the by God waves were falling and losing power. The blizzard was now nothing more than just a few flakes of drifting snow. And could it be that the perpetual night of the superstorm was actually clearing…?

_What the HELL?_

He craned his neck forward, trying to see the sky. He tried to figure out what was happening. Either they were out from under the storm, the storm had just now blown itself out, or…

_What? Or what?_

He could actually see blue sky. Directly above the _James Clark Ross_ was a fifty-mile high curved wall of solid cloud that was ringing a huge expanse of the most perfect, brilliant azure sky. He just had time to realise that this was almost certainly a bad thing when something far, far worse happened.

It started as a burning sensation in his arms and chest. He looked downwards and noticed with rising panic the lines of white frost that seemed to be growing over his parka almost as if they had a mind. He raised his hand to try and brush it off, but all he got was sensation like his bones were breaking coming from beneath the flesh and muscles of his arms.

He took in one deep breath, and his lungs burst into balls of fire, he tried to clutch at his chest, but he could no longer feel anything beyond the flames in his chest. He could no longer move, and that was the last thing he ever knew as a huge mass of frozen air fell from the upper reaches of the atmosphere smashed into the _James Clark Ross_. All across the ship vital hydraulic fluid, literally the vessel's lifeblood, froze solid in its lines. She was now crippled and out of control, helpless and lost in the grip of the superstorm.


	33. Rolling

_**R.R.S. James Clark Ross**_

**11.55 A.M, December 5th, 2004**

McIntyre was staggering – no other word for it, he knew – towards the infirmary, which had become the ships unofficial gathering space. The motion of the ship was appalling, much worse up here than it had been down in engineering where he was coming from. Much to his concern he found that he could barely see through the fog that filled his eyes and he had long ago given up trying to stop his left hand shaking uncontrollably. All he wanted was to find his cabin and give in to the sweet embrace of sleep that was calling him inexorably to its arms. But he couldn't, his cabin was now in a section of the _James Clark Ross_ that had been smashed open by the giant wave. So everything he possessed, in all likelihood, was now at the bottom of the Atlantic.

But he didn't want to think about that, just like he didn't want to think about how the ship's ballast was seriously at risk given that twenty-five percent of the compartments were flooded and there was standing water of various depths in another fifty. He had tried his best with the pumps, but all he was doing was keeping their heads above water, and no more. With a lot of luck and probably a miracle they might make it out alive, but deep inside him he knew that the _James Clark Ross_ was mortally wounded, foundering through the greatest storm in the history of the world, and he couldn't see beyond the battered ship sinking beneath them.

He wondered for a second what drowning was like.

He was just coming up to the infirmary when something extraordinary penetrated the clouds that cloaked his mind. The screaming of the storm had gone; all he could hear now was the rhythmic creaking of the ship. Now he thought about, even the violent rocking and rolling was diminished to an almost gentle swell.

It took him about a second and a half to throw off the ever-tightening grip of sleep and figure out that something was disastrously wrong. A second after that he heard the sound of glass all over the ship explode. Instinctively he ducked close to the deck, even though there was no glass around him. He scurried forward, keeping low, into the infirmary.

He didn't even have time to wonder why Zoe Monroe was tied up to a counter or why Oliver Cole was lying spread-eagled against the bulkhead. All he had time to do was slam – and lock – the door behind him before the screaming and groaning sounds of steel under stress filled the room. The blond-haired man – Chris, he remembered – had leapt to his feet, wide eyes pointed up to the ceiling.

"What the hell is going on?" he shouted, his voice shot through with panic that perfectly matched his face.

"I don't know!" McIntyre cried back. "Just hang on to something!" The sounds from above continued, drowning out the whole world. McIntyre felt his guts constrict with fear and his hands gripped tight to the cupboard he had clung to until his knuckles went white. He looked up, expecting any moment for the whole ceiling to implode beneath a cataract of freezing water. He squeezed ever tighter; preparing his body for the moment of drowning that he was sure was coming.

_This is it, she can't take any more!_

At that moment the other man, the dark-haired one, burst shoulder-first through the door, smashing the wooden door straight off its hinges. McIntyre looked up in shock, convinced for a heartbeat that it was the Atlantic Ocean blasting in and not fifteen stones of panicked Englishman.

"What the bloody hell is happening?" CJ – _CJ, yes_ – shouted, unsuccessfully trying to mask his fear. He never got an answer, for at that moment the _James Clark Ross_ heeled over radically to starboard. Everyone was knocked flat by the huge roll, all except Chris who had the presence of mind to both cling on to the gurney his girlfriend lay unconscious on and keep her from falling in the same movement.

The heeling went on, and McIntyre realised that this was the death roll of the _James Clark Ross_. Whatever new catastrophe had hit them, it had capsized them. He tried to relax, to get himself ready for the end, but it was no use. The last thing he would ever know would be sick fear that tore his insides out.

He didn't know why, but that did not happen. With a speed that was terrifying in its slowness, the ship began to right herself, and as it did so, cold air, colder than he had ever known, began pouring through the ventilation system.

_What now?_

With utter astonishment, which printed a ludicrous, bug-eyed expression on his face, he saw his breath form into freezing white clouds before him. This, he knew as he began shivering violently, was impossible. He had been on the ship through the very worst the Antarctic Ocean had to offer, and this deep in the superstructure, they shouldn't even notice the cold. Was it possible the storm had got even colder? Colder than anything they had even experienced?

And then, as if a switch had been thrown, the sound of the storm came racing back. It started low, a whistling nearly beyond human hearing. Then steadily it got louder, and louder, until it was screaming with the fervour of an animal, bringing with it the violent bucking and rolling as the ocean rose once again to its former tempest-wracked fury.

Whatever it was, it was over.

Barely able to believe he was still alive, McIntyre looked around cautiously. He tried breathing again, and this time the condensation was not nearly as thick as before, but he was still shivering, the cold weather gear he was wearing only just working. He looked to the others, and noticed Chris and Donna, neither wearing much more than one layer of clothing, were practically convulsing from the deadly drop in temperature.

"CJ!" he shouted. CJ looked up, blood covering half his face. "That cupboard over there. Get blankets for them, quickly!"

CJ stared back uncomprehendingly for a second, then half-ran and half-scrabbled across the infirmary. As he was wrapping his friends in layers of blankets, McIntyre got unsteadily to his feet and staggered across to check on Oliver Cole. He pressed two fingers against his friend's neck, and knew even before he got to where the pulse should be that Cole was dead. He bowed his head for a second.

_There's no time, Don_.

Zoe Monroe next. He didn't know why she was tied up, but once this was all over, he was going to find out, and he was not going to take no for answer. She was breathing, the deep, regular rhythm of someone in unconsciousness. He got to his feet, and pointed at CJ, who was gingerly exploring the brand new wound that had opened up on his forehead.

"Stay here, son. I'm going to the bridge."

"No argument," CJ replied.

And with that, McIntyre strode out into the passageway, and he got as far as ten feet before he was stopped in his tracks by what he saw next.

"Holy mother of God," he muttered. The sense of shocked awe in his voice was enough to make CJ ignore his order and follow McIntyre out of the infirmary. He crossed himself as his eyes went wide.

The passageway was caked solidly in a half an inch thick layer of frost.


	34. The Castle Of Bones

**_R.R.S. James Clark Ross_**

**12.01 P.M, December 5****th****, 2004**

"Holy shit," CJ managed. "How the hell did that happen?"

McIntyre was momentarily at a loss for words, but it didn't last long as his mouth came up with a reply without the intervention of his brain.

"Do you really want to know?" he asked.

CJ appeared to consider this for a second, opened his mouth to make a smart-alec reply, and then shut it again as none presented itself.

"We gonna sink?" he tried eventually, sounding as if he didn't really want to know the answer.

"That's what I'm going to find out." McIntyre turned to CJ. "Now stay here and fix that hole in your head while I go and stop us from sinking."

CJ clamped one hand over the leaking gash above his right eye.

"It's fixed," he said defiantly, daring McIntyre to disagree.

McIntyre tried to look stony-faced, but then relented. He knew he was going to need an extra hand because he had simply no idea what lay ahead of them all, and the only way they were all going to make it through alive was by working together.

"Well at least get a bandage over that then. You'll be no use to me bleeding all over the place."

"Right you are, Cap," CJ replied with a failed attempt at cheerfulness. He went carefully back into the infirmary, keeping one hand against the wall in attempt to keep his balance on a deck now more accurately an ice rink. McIntyre watched his retreating back leave then advanced a few more yards down the passageway. He had to watch his step, because the deck was murderously icy, and the ship had once again started the ferocious pitching and rolling that made even the briefest journey an utter nightmare.

"Ready." McIntyre looked around. CJ had hurriedly taped a gauze pad across his wound – in an attempt at repair best described as 'slapdash' – and had pulled on some cold weather survival gear. McIntyre noticed a touch uneasily that the material of the jacket and sallopets were rimed with frost which had no earthly right forming deep in the middle of a ship.

"Okay, follow me and for God's sake watch where you're putting your damn feet."

They moved off again, watching the floor with every step and moving as tentatively as crippled old women.

"Where we going?"

"The bridge, I want to see if Tony's still got us under control."

"Wouldn't we have sunk by now if he hadn't?"

McIntyre didn't answer that straightaway. He had to get up to the bridge as fast as possible because if Willis was dead or injured then it was surely only a matter of time before they lost headway and sank. _James Clark Ross_ was a fine seaworthy ship but right now she was battered and bruised, torn full of holes and far too low in the water for any sailor to put one foot on her willingly.

"No."

"I'll take your word for it."

"Good."

They continued in silence for a moment.

"Now shut the hell up."

The thought crossed McIntyre's mind that maybe CJ was just scared shitless, which was why he was talking a great deal of crap, and that last retort had probably been unnecessary. That thought lasted only a second when the engineer pushed it to the back of his head, told himself that there was no time for that kind of stupid woolly-minded thinking because in all likelihood _he_ was going have to save the ship with only the aid of a weatherman, a catatonic woman and three university students, only one whom seemed to have even the slightest connection with reality.

_And even he wasn't exactly Mr. Reliable._ From what McIntyre had observed, CJ had a level head that was occasionally seriously unlevelled by a tendency to never think ahead when required to. Of course, he recognised that the student was pretty quick on his feet, that he had a talent for improvisation when it was needed, but impetuousness was not what was required to see out this storm. What was required was care, forethought, stability, all the things he had yet to see in CJ.

_Now the other one_, McIntyre thought. Chris, he seemed ideal, far more serious and much better at thinking with his head instead of his gut. Except right now, whatever part of his head that wasn't consumed with anguish and worry over his comatose girlfriend was calculating the odds of getting off this ship alive, and quite frankly he was now worse than useless, his mind was so far away from the matter at hand he was actively unsafe.

They ascended a flight of stairs in a darkness punctuated by the twin beams of their torches.

"Shouldn't there be emergency lights on?" CJ asked.

"Must have been knocked out," McIntyre replied.

McIntyre stopped before a bulkhead door stencilled 'Deck A'. The engineer put one hand on the locking handle, then paused and half turned to look over his shoulder.

"What is it?" CJ asked cautiously.

"I don't know what's happened to the ship and whatever is past this door may be extremely hazardous to out health."

"So?"

"So be ready to run like hell."

McIntyre pressed down on the handle and slowly swung the door open, behind him he heard CJ take in a deep nervous breath. He had pushed open the door only a few inches when an icy gale so cold as to be an almost solid wall slammed the hatch right back and sent him reeling backwards into CJ. Only the student's quick reactions in grabbing hold of the steel banister stopped them both tumbling down into neck-breaking darkness.

"Still want to go through there?" CJ enquired breathlessly.

McIntyre replied with a wordless look of contempt.

"Give me a hand this time," he growled.

CJ nodded, and assumed a stance next to the engineer.

"Ready," McIntyre said, knowing to tense his muscles and brace his legs this time. "Now." He pushed down the handle, and then both of them pressed all their weight against the hatch. This time, however, the wind on the other side had temporarily dropped and the pair of them fell headlong through the hatchway, coming down in a tangled heap on an uneven sheet of something slick and unyielding. McIntyre noticed how it refracted the dancing beams of the falling torches to throw crazed patterns of light and dark all across the passageway.

"What the fuck?" CJ muttered as he tried pushing himself up from the deck. McIntyre grabbed one of the torches and pointed it straight downward.

"Ice. It's water coming in from the bridge that's frozen solid."

"Terrific," CJ said as he struggled into a kneeling position. "I'll bet that's something else that's never happened before."

McIntyre pulled himself gingerly to his feet using the doorframe they had just fallen through.

"Until we reach the bridge, I don't know what happened. And until then, shut the hell up."


	35. Shattered

_**R.R.S. James Clark Ross **_

**12.25 P.M, December 5th, 2004**

It took them a further twenty minutes to traverse the fifty feet of passageway and ten stairs to the bridge, and both McIntyre and CJ had gained a painful collection of grazes and cuts as they had tried to progress along a frozen deck that was now rolling through ever more extreme arcs. CJ had twice suggested turning back but McIntyre pushed on grimly. He was beginning to suspect that the _James Clark Ross_ was no longer under helm, and that they were swinging broadside to the storm. If that was the case, and the wildly pitching deck told him it probably was, then it was only a matter of time before the ocean capsized them and that would be it.

He also wondered – though not very hard – what had happened to Tony Willis. At the very least, McIntyre thought that the weatherman was injured and immobile, which gave him another reason to get to the bridge as fast as possible. So the two of them, the grizzled engineer and the far-from-home student, pushed on, battering themselves to pieces to get somewhere they didn't really want to see.

And now they were here. McIntyre had taken two paces into the bridge and CJ was holding onto to the frame of the hatchway, both of them had screwed their faces up against the battering of spray that flew in through the torn-open bulkhead.

McIntyre allowed himself one second of relief as he saw the figure of Tony Willis, stood stock against the storm with one hand on the ships wheel and the other grasped on the throttle. Then he drew in a breath to prepare for an official bollocking. There was nothing wrong with Willis and there was no excuse for letting the _James Clark Ross_ drift off course. He laid on hand on the weatherman's shoulder and turned him round…

What happened next was something that McIntyre was never to forget for the rest of his life.

As soon as the engineer laid his hand down on Willis' shoulder he just _knew_, instinctively, that something was not right. He couldn't tell what it was, and didn't have time to think because at that very moment there was a noise like a gunshot and the frozen corpse of Tony Willis toppled backwards like a fallen statue. His body seemed to fall through a majestic slow-motion arc before crashing into the deck and shattering into a million shards of human porcelain.

McIntyre took a faltering step back in horror. Behind him, even above the roar of the storm, he could hear the sound of CJ being noisily sick. Trying not to look at the abattoir confetti that was all that remained of _James Clark Ross'_ weatherman his eyes instead fell on the two feet which remained frozen to the deck, and the two gloved hands that seemed to grow out of thin air to keep a final death grip onto the ship's wheel and throttle bar.

He jumped as a glove clamped down on his shoulder.

"What the fuck happened?" CJ screamed into his ear.

McIntyre struggled to get his voice into gear. His throat felt dry and closed up and he had to cough twice to clear it before he could speak.

"I don't know!" he yelled back. "But I've got to get us pointed back into the wind before we sink!" He swallowed nervously, before moving towards the helm station. He tried to focus his mind on steering the ship as he crunched through the mortal remains of Tony Willis. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a green-faced CJ cringe visibly. Now faced with the disembodied hands on the helm he tried further to blank his imagination as he grabbed them and pulled.

They were stuck. Frozen, obviously. He felt panic rise in his gut, but managed to quickly bury it with oft-practiced ease. His face now set like stone he grasped the dead hands and yanked them away in one swift motion. He didn't even give them a second look as he tossed them aside, where they broke up on the deck.

_Right_, McIntyre thought, _time to get back in business._ He took hold of the wheel and throttle and gently began to turn the _James Clark Ross' _bow back into the teeth of the storm. A minute passed, and it was then he noticed with a sinking sensation in his stomach that the compass had not changed one degree. The ship's steering was gone.

CJ must have noticed his expression change because he suddenly appeared beside McIntyre.

"What's wrong?" he yelled.

"We've lost steering!" McIntyre shouted back. He was testing his theory by turning the wheel the other way and getting no response. The _James Clark Ross _was now utterly helpless, out of control in the worst storm in history. McIntyre closed his eyes for a second before a brainwave hit him in a flash of inspiration. He staggered as fast as possible across the bridge to the engineering station. He ran his eyes with the pace of a professional eye across the bank of dials until he came to the one he was looking for.

"There!" he cried, stabbing one gloved finger against the dial labelled '**hydraulic pressure**'.

CJ peered over his shoulder, squinted through the water running down his face.

"What is it?"

"We've lost pressure in the hydraulics system. I think the hydraulic fluid froze and without it we can't steer the ship!"

"Can we do anything?" CJ asked, a hint of pleading edging into his voice.

McIntyre fell silent for a second, his brain running through a furious series of calculations. Then suddenly he wheeled around to face CJ, his eyes ablaze.

"We've got to get down to the blueprint storage locker," he said, pushing past the student who looked at him in bafflement.

"What? Why?"

"I need to check the plans of the ship." McIntyre made his way off the bridge as fast as possible across the ice-rink that the deck had become. CJ began to follow after he dismissed the bewilderment that clouded his mind.

"Okay, pal, whatever you say."

"C'mon!" McIntyre's retreating form cried. "We don't have long to get this done!"


	36. The Plan

**_R.R.S. James Clark Ross_**

**1.15 P.M, December 5****th****, 2004**

McIntyre and CJ had been gone for nearly forty-five minutes before Chris had started to get worried. And then they turned up two minutes later, and he felt a bit of a fool. After all, precisely nothing had happened in the infirmary. Donna still lay on the bed, barely conscious through the cloak of drugs and pain. Dr Whatserface – _er, Monroe, that was it _– was still tied to a counter and was _completely_ unconscious. Still. Despite himself, Chris was impressed. He didn't think knockout punches like the one delivered by CJ existed outside of movies. Evidently they did. So for the moment, Chris was not worried by the doctor's grief-fuelled rage, which appeared to be directed at him.

Luckily, he had only starting getting worried for two minutes when McIntyre and CJ stumbled, battered and bruised, back into the infirmary with a number of rolled-up sheets of paper tucked beneath their arms. He resisted the urge to say "Oh thank God," and instead went back to concentrating on Donna. He didn't get long.

"Hey you," McIntyre barked. Chris turned around to see the engineer rolling out one of the sheets of paper and saw for the first time that they were blueprints.

"What?"

"Come hold down the other end of this." CJ had pinned down one end already on a spare counter space. Timing his walk so the roll of the ship would actually help him for once, Chris went over to the counter and did as he was told.

If he was honest with himself, McIntyre scared the shit out of him, but then again, he was their only way out of this God-awful mess. So he did whatever the engineer said, as it appeared to be his only chance of being alive beyond the next few hours.

He looked down at the blueprints and realised he couldn't make out a single thing. The white lines looked like they had been randomly dribbled on the fine blue paper by a drunken spider.

"What is it?" he asked, baffled.

McIntyre looked sideways at him.

"It's the plans for the ship, you idiot."

Despite the situation they were in, Chris saw CJ crack a small smile at this rebuke.

"Well why do we need those then?" he retorted, managing to conjure up a hint of defiance.

"Something's happened to the ship," McIntyre began.

"What?"

"I don't know, you pillock." Chris flushed as this. "But whatever it was it's frozen the hydraulic fluid in the lines. And that means we can't steer the ship, and unless we fix it soon we're going to be sunk."

"You can fix it, right?" Chris was now pale with shock. Was this it? The moment that he had dreaded ever since he had been hauled on board this death trap?

"Yes, we can."

"_We?_"

"Yes, now look." McIntyre stabbed a finger down on the blueprint unrolled on the counter. Chris looked down at the plan dimly. The engineer could have pointing at the toilet for all that he could read it. "Hydraulic fluid is kept moving by this pump in the aft engineering room. That's supposed to stop the fluid freezing in polar conditions, which we usually sail in."

"The guarantee expired then?" CJ asked sardonically.

"When we were struck by that freak wave," McIntyre continued, ignoring the interruption, "I think it knocked out the pump when we lost main power. There was supposed to be a backup generator that would kick in automatically in such a case, and evidently it failed. So basically, if we don't get that generator started then we're going to drift out of control until we get sunk, which could happen at any time."

"So what do _we _have to do?" Chris asked.

"I can't do this on my own. I need one of you to come with me. It won't be easy to get there either." The engineer pulled out a black felt-tip marker from his breast pocket and began to roughly fill in large areas of the blueprint. "These are the areas that flooded." Chris swallowed nervously. He hadn't realised, _truly _realised, just how badly damaged the _James Clark Ross_, until now.

"Normally," the engineer said, running a finger across the blueprint. "The route to aft engineering would be this."

The path he traced went through several flooded compartments. _Wonderful_, Chris thought, feeling his heart sink as he realised what was coming next.

"So how do we get there?" he asked anyway.

"We have to go out," McIntyre said firmly. "Out through the after hatch on D deck, across the quarter-deck, and through this hatch beneath the portside crane, down into E deck, and from there down to engineering. That's about a hundred and fifty feet out in the open, just a walk in the park." He looked the two students squarely in the eyes, first Chris, then CJ. "Just a walk in the park," he emphasised levelly. "And one of you has got to come with me."

There was a moment of silence, with only the roar of the storm and the creaking of the dying ship as a backdrop. And then:

"Count me out," said CJ.

"What?" Chris was genuinely surprised.

"It's suicide," CJ said. "You won't get ten feet out there before you're washed overboard."

"I've been out on deck in worse weather than this. We can make it, trust me." McIntyre was staring daggers at the dark young man, seemingly forgetting that he had to persuade one of the students to voluntarily risk his life.

"Not a chance," CJ said obstinately. "I'd rather wait to die in here before I go outside to drown. At least in here I'll be warm."

"It's down to you then," McIntyre said, turning to Chris.

"_I will get you out of this. I promise."_ The words he had spoken to Donna, her life slowly leaching away on the bed, came back to him. He had made a promise, so really there was only one thing he could do. Chris took a deep breath and forced himself not to panic.

"Count me in," he said.

"Good," McIntyre nodded.

"You're going to die out there, you idiots," CJ said. He shook his head then stalked out of the infirmary without a word or a backwards look. Once he had left Chris glanced across at McIntyre.

"We're going to do this," the engineer said. "We _have_ to do this, or we'll all be dead before the day is out."


	37. Elemental War

_**R.R.S. James Clark Ross**_

**2.02 P.M, December 5****th****, 2004**

McIntyre and Chris stood at the after hatch on D deck, wrapped up in half a dozen layers of thermal insulation and tied together with a fifteen-foot rope that was hooked securely to the harnesses they both wore over their jackets. Chris shifted as his harness dug painfully into places even Heineken couldn't reach. He rubbed his gloved hands together, noticing with dismay that it was so cold down here his fingers were already going numb.

_Well_, he reflected,_ here they were_. The two of them about to stride like a pair of morons out into the greatest storm in human history, and straight into what was very likely to be certain death. Logically he knew a hundred and fifty feet didn't sound like all that much, but when it was a hundred and fifty feet of icy steel decking, battered by a mountainous ocean and hurricane strength winds, where the first misstep or mistake would be rewarded with a voyage to the bottom of the sea, well then, it may as well be a hundred and fifty miles.

He had said his goodbyes to Donna, although he wasn't totally sure if she had heard them. His lover seemed to be out of it, and he had no confidence whatsoever that his words had actually sunk in. But he'd said them anyway, because he didn't think that he would ever see her again.

"Ready?" McIntyre asked, bringing Chris back to reality.

"No," he replied with a weak attempt at a grin.

McIntyre turned and grasped the locking wheel. He only paused for a fraction of a second before pushing open the hatch. Instantly the gale snatched it out of his hands and slammed it wide open, and following straight on the heels of that a huge cataract of icy water blasted into the passageway. Within seconds both of them were up to their waists in swirling seawater. The cold was so sudden and so piercing that Chris actually cried out in pain and shock. For a moment he thought he was going to be swept away, such was the power of the current. He felt the mighty hands of the ocean pull and tear at his legs and was just a heartbeat away from total panic.

Then the current reversed, and the water drained back out through the hatch. McIntyre turned and signalled to Chris that they should move out. Chris briefly considered unlocking the cam for the rope that tied him to the engineer and running for his life. But even now he still managed to think of Donna, and just a flash frame of her face in his mind was enough to goad his frozen legs into action and follow McIntyre out of the hatch and onto the deck.

They hadn't made it two paces out onto the covered walkway that led down towards the quarterdeck when a mighty wave crashed into them like a solid wall of water, tossing them bodily against the unforgiving steel of the port bulkhead, and before they had a chance to recover the suction of the retreating water dragged them thirty feet down the walkway before McIntyre managed to catch the railings in a two-armed death grip, and saved them from being swept to certain death in the waiting maw of the Atlantic.

Chris lay stunned on his back, coughing up seawater that sent icy needles stabbing through his chest. He was fairly sure he was downing when the grizzled face of McIntyre loomed over him and a voice screamed in his ear:

"Do exactly what I do before we get washed overboard!"

_I have no problem with that_, Chris thought, trying not to cough up his lungs.

With powerful one arm clasped to Chris' and one wrapped around the railings McIntyre hauled him to his feet, then once again the engineer led off, only now he proceeded with far more caution, the next time they were hit by a wave they would probably not be so lucky. Every time now they were inundated McIntyre screamed a warning and they would both crouch down as tight as possible, both arms gripping the railings and then all they could do was hang on for dear life as the murderous force of the sea tried to haul them away into the bottomless black depths.

Progress was glacial. Chris kept his eyes fixed on McIntyre's boots, placing his own feet precisely in the engineer's footsteps. With every wave they had to go through the same process of ducking and waiting, with nothing to do but and hang on and pray that this wouldn't be the one that yanked them overboard.

Getting to the end of the walkway was tricky; descending the grated steps down to the quarter-deck was murder. Chris was whipped off his feet after one ferocious wave and flung right into McIntyre. Only lightening quick reactions by the engineer in grabbing hold of a lifeboat stanchion prevented a one-way trip overboard.

Once again Chris found himself on his back, gasping and choking as what seemed like the entire Atlantic Ocean tried to force itself into his lungs. This time he managed to pull himself upright, and as he threw his head back in a vain attempt to get water out of his eyes the wall of rain and sleet and wave parted and for a split second he saw the mesmerizing panorama of the world beneath the superstorm.

The _James Clark Ross_ seemed to be caught in a global battle between sea and sky, with monstrous waves hurling themselves towards the heavens and a continent-spanning snowfall screaming into the ocean. Lightning screamed across the clouds, illuminating scenes from a watery hell. The sight was so overwhelming as to be beyond human comprehension, and when the curtain of water was finally drawn again he felt shocked beyond thought so that he just stood there, clung to the railing like the frozen corpse of a down draft victim.

He was roused by a sharp tugging in his midriff. McIntyre was yanking on the connecting rope, urgently signalling with his eyes that they should be moving on while they had the good fortune to still be on the ship. Chris needed no second telling, and followed the engineer's lead, shuffling slowly along, hunched up with one arm wrapped around the railings at all times.

The quarter-deck was a large open space at the stern of the ship where the _James Clark Ross_ launched her research boats and where most of her sensory equipment was operated from. Now, however, it was a barren shelf of steel, swept clean by the awe-inspiring power of the storm and the rogue wave. Nothing remained except one davit which was sheltered by the crane housing at the very end of the ship.

It took them twenty minutes to cover the eighty feet of open deck before they reached their destination, and by now Chris was convinced he was mere moments from freezing to death. He couldn't feel his hands or feet or his face, and he wondered just how much longer he was going to last before he lost his grip on the waking world and was swept into an icy, pitiless void…

But it never came to that. With a surge of relief he saw the portside hatch, set flush into the deck, the locking wheel coated with a shiny film of ice. McIntyre was hunched over and Chris hunkered down next to him, taking small comfort in the meagre shelter from the storm provided by the ship's crane platform.

McIntyre passed him a torch. "Point that down the hatch when I open it!" he screamed above the all-pervading roar. As Chris clicked on the torch McIntyre seized the locking wheel and with a cry of exertion twisted it around. The hatch flew open in his hands, causing him to fall back onto his rear. Chris did as he was told and shone the torch down the hatch, illuminating a cramped, dark shaft with iron rungs of a ladder set into one side.

"Down there!" McIntyre yelled, his voice cracking with a combination of effort and cold. Gingerly Chris swung one leg in, feeling his muscles burn. He began descending into a bucking, pitching darkness, escaping the ocean's greedy clutches, if only for a few moments.


	38. Almost Easy

_**R.R.S. James Clark Ross**_

**2.45 P.M, December 5****th****, 2004**

The shaft was pitch dark, only illuminated by the wildly swinging torches of Chris and McIntyre. In this cramped environment, and denied of any clear visual stimulus, the rocking and rolling motion of the ship seemed so much worse to the two of them. Several times Chris had to stop his descent as he was overcome by a terrifying wave of dizziness which forced him to cling tightly to the rungs of the ladder with his eyes screwed shut until it passed.

Somehow they reached to bottom of the shaft with nothing worse than bruises. As his feet touched the solid steel of the deck, Chris flashed the torch up the shaft. He could see McIntyre moving with a surprising nimbleness down the ladder, a dark shape clambering down the narrow shaft towards him. He took a step back to allow the engineer out of the shaft, shining his torch around the passageway. Stencilled onto one wall was the legend 'DECK E', and twenty feet off to his left was another hatchway marked 'AFT ENGINEERING'.

He noticed that this passageway was still quite dry, which presumably meant that the ship was still watertight. The only water had come from the hatchway above them, which McIntyre had managed to pull shut behind them.

The engineer reached the bottom of the ladder and swung his torch towards the hatchway down the corridor.

"That way," he said, a touch unnecessarily, Chris thought.

"Lead on," Chris said.

McIntyre moved forwards, legs braced against the ship's constant rolling, and Chris followed on, conscious that this moment's inactivity meant he had started shivering in his sodden clothes. He rubbed his arms against his body in a vain attempt to get the blood circulating again as he started after the engineer. He noticed McIntyre paused as he grabbed the locking wheel firmly with two gloved hands, but only for a moment.

The hatch swung open. Nothing happened. Chris let out a breath he hadn't been aware that he had been holding in.

"I half expected a fireball or something there," he said.

"We'd have noticed by now," McIntyre replied. "Because we would have sunk already."

"Oh," Chris said, flatly. "Great."

McIntyre stepped gingerly over the doorsill, and Chris heard the soft clang of his feet on the metal grill on the other side.

"Watch your footing," McIntyre called. "Some debris has dropped on the catwalk."

_Fantastic, _Chris thought, flicking his torch on and pointing it firmly at the deck. He walked onto the catwalk, then delicately stepped over the two foot high piece of engine or something that the engineer had casually referred to as mere 'debris'.

"That wasn't important, was it?" he asked, risking a quick glance over his shoulder at it. Whatever it was, it really did look vital. He was no marine engineer, but it looked heavy and oily and –

Distracted, he tripped over something else heavy and unyielding, took one more staggering step, and was only saved from pitching over the edge of the catwalk by a metal railing. His torch fell from his hand to a noisy, dark oblivion. After a second his heart began to beat again and his eyes shrank from the size of saucers.

McIntyre looked around briefly. He didn't help Chris up.

"Watch where you're going," he snapped.

With the aid of the railing, Chris hauled himself upright, battling against legs wobbling from the shock of the fall and not helped much by the constant rolling of the ship that he had still not got used to. He shuffled closer to McIntyre, trying to see where he was going solely by the light of the engineer's torch.

They reached a flight of stairs that was more of a ladder than anything else. Chris swallowed nervously, he wasn't relishing making that perilous climb with the hysterical motion rocking them from side to side but then McIntyre settled the issue and began making his way down using both hands and feet. Since Chris was tied to the engineer by a rope at his waist, he followed him down the ladder, slowly and carefully, not trusting the grip on his soaking boots to hold onto the rungs.

As he reached the bottom he cringed as he felt freezing water pour into his boots. He looked downwards and saw he was now stood in a foot of icy seawater.

"Nice," he muttered.

McIntyre was sloshing away across the engineering space without so much as a backwards glance so Chris followed him, being careful to match footsteps exactly with the engineer. The student was relieved to note that down here, in the guts of the _James Clark Ross_, the wild pitching and bucking was reduced to a tolerable, almost lulling motion. For a second he could almost forget he was stuck in a pitch dark coffin of iron up to his knees in icy water, then from out of nowhere there was a great groan of some distant bulkhead under strain and he came right back to reality.

Chris followed the engineer through another hatchway into a separate compartment filled with big hulking consoles full of dials that towered eight feet high along three walls. McIntyre headed straight for one of them. It had been labelled with stencilled writing but that had been obscured by a huge, fan-shaped scorch-mark. All the dials and monitors that had once glowed with light had been blown out.

"What happened?" Chris asked, trying to keep the cold out of his voice.

"Short-circuit, when the water hit it."

"Can you fix it?"

"Yeah, there's a manual starter. Shine your torch over there." McIntyre pointed off to one side of the hydraulic pump. "It's a primer designed with this in mind. There was supposed to be an alarm triggered on the bridge when it was knocked out, but I reckon the wave destroyed that too."

From somewhere above came the screech of tearing steel as McIntyre grasped a lever protruding from the pump. He yanked it downwards once, hard. There was a harsh chugging sound that seemed to come from everywhere at once as the lever slowly returned to its original position. Chris heard the engineer slowly counting to five beneath his breath, then haul down on the lever once again.

This time there was a cough, and then, laboriously at first, but gaining in strength with each passing second there came a steady, mechanical pulse that rose and pounded all around them.

"Is that all?" Chris asked, something like incredulity giving his voice a higher pitch than usual.

"That's all."

"Oh thank Christ," Chris muttered.

"Yes, right," McIntyre retorted. "Now we have to back onto the bridge before this ship capsizes and you can thank him in person."


	39. Nearly There

_**R.R.S. James Clark Ross**_

**3.10 P.M, December 5****th****, 2004**

Back on deck, McIntyre pushed open the portside hatch, and was rewarded with a breath-stealing torrent of freezing brine. He almost lost his grip on the iron rungs of the ladder as the shock caused his body to flinch involuntarily. He recovered his grip quickly, Chris noticed, two feet below him and for a second the younger man wondered if he would have managed that or if by now he would have been a broken heap at the bottom of the ladder…

He decided not to worry as he followed McIntyre out on to the deck and was hit instantly in the face by another surge of water. He choked for a second before the engineer hauled him bodily out through the hatch before he could fall back down

Chris lay face down on the deck, gasping to clear the water from his lungs. His ribs burned where McIntyre had grabbed him; he hadn't realised that the engineer was so strong. He looked up, salt-water streaming into his eyes and his hair plastered against his forehead. He didn't bother saying thanks, and assumed his expression would save him the effort.

"Let's go!" McIntyre screamed into his ear. The engineer hauled Chris to his feet and started off across the deck. The pair of them were now exhausted almost beyond human endurance, fear and exertion presenting the joint bills on their bodies and demanding immediate payment. But that would have to wait. Once more they had an unforgiving hundred and fifty feet to traverse before they could even think about safety and rest. Chris knew that they would make CJ take first shift on the helm when they got back. As for himself, he'd take one look in the infirmary at Donna, and then he would pass out.

And with any luck he wouldn't wake up for a thousand years, or at least until his next shift at the helm… He could almost taste the sweet scent of unconsciousness that awaited him if he could just make it to that hatch and slam it behind him.

He was still thinking along these lines when something awful registered briefly in his peripheral vision. He just had time to turn his head to face it and open his mouth to try to yell in terror before a huge wall of freezing water swept over them both and sent them barrelling towards the side of the ship. Instantly his lungs filled with water and then a hammer blow smashed into him from behind and whatever air was left in his lungs was immediately expelled. He had a terrifying flashback to the moment when the storm surge had consumed him which froze his mind.

Chris forced his eyes open and found himself looking downwards at the tortured Atlantic ocean just a few metres below his dangling feet and a cold ball of fear gripped his heart as he realised he was _hanging over the edge of the ship_. Panic surged through his body and he began thrashing about, frantic beyond the power for thought, desperately trying to find some handhold to pull himself back onto the deck. But his gloved hands found nothing but slick, freezing, steel and the knowledge that death was probably moments away meant he never stopped to wonder what had stopped him being swallowed by the sea.

A second later he wondered no more as a strong arm swooped out of the darkness and wrapped around his chest. Chris looked up to see McIntyre, still attached to him by a safety line, with one arm wrapped around the railing and the other pulling him frantically back on board. The engineer's face was purple and strained with exertion. Chris reached up to the railings and with his own failing reserves of energy he pulled himself back up with every fibre of his body.

Locked together they fell on the deck, and Chris allowed himself one second to take the deepest ever sigh of relief before another wall of water crashed over the ship and once again threatened to wash the pair of them away. This time McIntyre was prepared and grabbed hold of the stanchion of the ship's aft loading crane with both arms. Chris was arrested in his uncontrolled slide across the deck with a jerk that felt like it had broken his spine in half. Behind him McIntyre struggled to his feet with the greedy Atlantic swirling around his waist, the pull of the ocean tearing furiously at his legs. The engineer took a few laboured steps forward, grabbed Chris by the hood of his survival jacket and yanked him to his feet.

"Follow me!" McIntyre screamed over the howling tumult, pointing at the after hatch now just thirty feet away. Escape was so close Chris could practically feel it as a warmth filling his body, reviving limbs that were so numb as to be useless lengths of frozen meat. He summoned what was left of his will to live and hauled his carcass after the red survival suit that staggered ahead of him.

Water poured across the deck as the _James Clark Ross_ once again rose from the sucking embrace of the sea and prepared to meet the next onslaught. For a few seconds the going was relatively easy and McIntyre covered the final few steps to safety as fast as he could, finally falling against the locking wheel of the hatch and grasped it tight in both hands as if resolving to never let go as long as he lived. Chris staggered across deck and held tight to the railings as the burly engineer span the wheel and hauled the hatch open, fighting every inch of the way against the roaring gale.

Finally it came open and Chris had a fraction a second to watch the shock begin to form in McIntyre's eyes as the axe sliced down from inside the ship, through the tempestuous dark and split the engineer's skull open as neatly as a halved apple…

For a second time seemed frozen. Chris was still gripping to tightly to the ship's railings, mouth opening in the beginnings of a scream of terror as McIntyre was smashed to the deck with the force of the blow. His head hit the steel hard, the axe-head still lodged in his forehead, almost perfectly along the crown of his skull. Blood ran, and mixed into a pinkish foam with spray of the ocean. And still gripping the axe, eyes burning with the madness of pure fury, Zoe Monroe turned her hate-fuelled gaze to Chris, and let out a scream from the depths of hell.


	40. The Chase

_**R.R.S. James Clark Ross**_

**3.25 P.M, December 5****th****, 2004**

Chris' mind yammered in panic. For the first time since this all began all thoughts of the storm vanished from his brain and were replaced by a wall of white-noise terror. He tried to scream in fear, but all that came out was a strangled croak of air. His brain barely registered the demented vision of fury before him as she raised the axe once more and swung it at him.

But this time Zoe Monroe was thrown off balance by the ship rolling violently to one side and the axe missed him by a matter of inches and sliced through the railing he was braced against. Hw stared down at it with a ludicrous expression of shock that would be comical in any other circumstances, and the finally his common sense took hold of his body and kicked him into action.

The axe had once again wedged firmly for a second and Chris took advantage by dashing past Zoe towards the salvation of the hatch. He got fifteen feet before the rope connecting him to the twitching corpse of Chief McIntyre went tight and yanked him off his feet. He crashed to the deck just as another torrent of freezing ocean washed over him. With his eyes stinging and lungs bunting he reached frantically down to his waist and with numb fingers tried desperately to unlatch the hook that now anchored him to a dead man. He snapped it open just as the axe whistled past his right ear and jammed into the deck.

There was another scream of insane rage behind him as he fell to his feet and scrambled away. As he staggered down the passageway Chris could feel the glare of madness burning into his back, and only then did it occur to wonder to him how Zoe had got out of the infirmary where she had been well tied-up –

_Donna!_

He looked up desperately up at the walls of the passageway, looking in vain for a sign telling him the way to the infirmary. All he could see was an inch-deep layer of ice coating everything and all he could feel was the hot breath of the madwoman behind him. He risked a glance over his shoulder. Zoe was twenty feet behind him, having trouble keeping her balance with one hand full of fire axe. He was so distracted by the torrent of stimuli flooding into his brain that he didn't notice the bulkhead in front of him until he ran full tilt into it…

Blinding white light obscured Chris' vision as he fell to the deck. Desperately winded, he tried to shake the cloud from his brain, and then an instinct he didn't know he possessed he kicked out one leg direct into the shins of the charging Dr. Monroe and sent her flying backwards.

He looked up and found himself lying at a t-junction. Hauling himself upright with a handy railing he picked a direction at random and set off left along another expanse of seemingly identical passageway. He had no real idea where he was going, in fact he could barely remember the way back to the infirmary, could barely think at all with the roaring spectre of violent death bearing ever down on him.

Ahead of him. Steps. A stray thought crossed his mind. The infirmary was up from here.

_Go!_

His mind was screaming at him now, urging him onwards. He pumped his legs harder, despite the fact they now felt like two useless pieces of frozen meat nailed to his waist. His body was pushing itself beyond its limits, but he knew he had to get to that infirmary first.

Of course it never occurred to him what he was going to do when he got there…

A hand gripped his leg and tripped him up. He smashed full length along the steps and tasted blood in his mouth. Without turning to look he thrashed both legs wildly and felt one of them connect solidly with a face. A scream of rage erupted behind him as he clambered on all fours upwards to the next hatch. It was swinging open and he fell through, trying with all his might to fill his lungs once again. He was almost thankful the cold had rendered his body numb, this way he couldn't feel his muscles burning and howling in protest.

'INFIRMARY'. There it was, the sign, and the arrow showing him the way. A mixture of relief and terror filled his heart. Relief that he was nearly back to his love, and terror at what he might find in there. What had Zoe done to make her escape? He forced his body into one last effort and half-ran, half-fell down the passageway. It can't have been more than then twenty feet to the smashed door of the infirmary and with the very last reserves of his vanished strength he collapsed headlong onto the frozen decking.

There she was. Donna, still strapped to the bed. Her chest still moving, slowly, shallowly, up and down with the clockwork motion of life. Relief flooded through his body like fire and he totally forgot the insane woman who wanted to kill him until a blood-curdling cry filled the air. He turned his body over to see Dr Monroe stood over him, axe raised in both hands over her head and a malevolent expression of triumph scored across her face.

Chris' body went limp as it prepared to die.

And then, without herald, CJ was there. In one brutal movement he blocked the falling axe with one arm and with the other shoved something into Zoe's open mouth. It wasn't until CJ pulled the trigger that Chris recognised it as a flare gun. The mad doctor's eyes flew open in horror as CJ hurled himself to the ground half a second before the shell exploded…

The whole world turned a lurid shade of crimson. Chris tried in vain to cover his eyes and screamed as the brutal light overwhelmed his senses. It seemed as if the whole ship was consumed in a blinding ball of fire, crashing, rolling throughout the passageways and cabins, as unstoppable as the wall of water that had devastated those very same spaces. On and on it went, until finally, with a suddenness that was breath taking, the light was gone.

Chris took his gloved hands from his eyes, and for one heart-stopping second he thought he was blind, for all he could see was a wall of white light, filling his vision from side to side. He blinked furiously while his abused eyes tried to regain some semblance of sight. Slowly the white wall cleared, and he found presently that he could see again.

He immediately wished he couldn't…


	41. Good Ol' Catholic Guilt

_**R.R.S. James Clark Ross**_

**3.35 P.M, December 5****th****, 2004**

CJ was trying to look at anything else but the passageway. He tried Chris, who was busily being sick in the corner of the infirmary. Donna, still unconscious on the bed. The flash burns on the back of his hands that had scorched all the hair off. The bits of bone and brain and blood that had redecorated everything for ten feet in every direction…

He felt his stomach turn again.

The last twenty minutes were not much more than a blur. He had been checking on Donna, having felt the good ol' Catholic guilt about his earlier cowardice. He knew he should have volunteered to go with McIntyre and fix the hydraulic pump, knew it with a certainty that burned the longer he thought about it. They were as good as dead anyway, but he could at least have put the whole thing off for a bit longer.

So he had checked on Donna since he had to do something more constructive that get on his knees and do a perfect act of contrition. She was still out, breathing shallow, pulse slow and steady. Her face was pale and drawn and although he was no medic by any stretch of the imagination, he knew that the life was rapidly draining out of her.

And it was then he noticed the bandages strewn on the floor and the complete absence of Dr Zoe Monroe.

He remembered looking around wildly, alert and wary, feeling the adrenaline suddenly coursing through his body. Part of him thought that logically there was no threat but that was kicked into touch by the animal part of him, which knew that anybody who needed subduing by a punch to the head was not operating logically. God alone knew what was going through her mind, but he had a fair idea about what she would want to do to the three people who she held responsible for her husband's death.

At which point something heavy and unyielding cracked him over the back of the head. He had been toppled to the ground. As he hit he could hear a voice screeching behind him. As he passed out he though it sounded something like "Where is he?"

He woke up a few minutes later, with his head screaming in protest at every small movement as he pulled himself upright. It took him a second to remember how he had ended up on the deck, and when the recollection came back to him with the force of a runaway train he had started in fear.

The infirmary was empty, apart from Donna. His eyes cast around for a weapon, any weapon, but there was very little. He settled for a tray that had held medical instruments. It was alarmingly light and flimsy, probably useless against whatever that deranged woman had cracked him with, but it would do.

He crept cautiously to the open doorway and stuck his head into the passage. Nothing. He knew he needed a better weapon, and to find Zoe before she found Chris. That last cry of "Where is he?" was chilling in its intent. She was out to find the one who had wronged her, and it was fairly obvious that when she found Chris she wasn't going to take him on a date and screw him in thanks. He went left. He found he could vaguely remember the direction they had taken, but soon found himself at a t-junction and not a single clue as to which way he was supposed to go next. It didn't help that he had a murderous headache and that coloured lights were strobing across his vision. He picked a direction at random and set off down it.

Two minutes later he knew he had gone the wrong way when he came up to a dead end. A broken porthole was set into the far bulkhead, and freezing seawater was pouring through it in regular intervals. He sighed and turned back, and that's when the door marked 'STORES' caught his eyes.

He tried the handle. Locked, of course, but a swift kick put pay to that. Inside was a largish room, full, as expected of two dozen shelves of equipment. There was probably something in here he could use, and after two minutes of rapid searching he came up trumps.

A flare gun in its box, and next it another box helpfully marked 'MK 2 SIGNAL SHELLS'. It would definitely do, and although he thought there was probably a gun cabinet somewhere on the ship he knew didn't have the time to go looking for it, especially when the blood-curdling scream echoed out through the ship. Without thinking he dashed out in the passage, fumbling a flare into the barrel of the gun as he ran towards the sound.

Whatever it was it was coming from the infirmary, and he doubled his pace as the image of a defenceless Donna with that madwoman running loose leapt into his imagination.

He turned a corner and slid into the passageway just in time to see Zoe Monroe raising her axe over her head, and Chris' legs sticking out of the door. Without another thought he breathlessly charged forward, threw out one arm to stop the falling axe and shoved the barrel of the flare gun into Zoe's open mouth. It never even occurred to him not to pull the trigger, but did it occur to him that his head was about a foot away from where a fairly large explosion was about to go off. His legs, without any intervention from his brain dropped him to the floor and his arms covered his head.

The bang wasn't that loud. What was louder were the foul, organic noises of Zoe's head and upper body laminating itself across every available surface. He knew that for the rest of his life – _however long that was_, he thought – he would never forget that wet slap of gore hitting metal. He rolled onto his back, breathing hard, and noticed in a detached, dreamlike way the fire axe which had obviously been blown upwards and now was jammed into the ceiling in the middle of a wide splash of the late Dr Zoe Monroe.


	42. The Fifth Commandment

_**R.R.S. James Clark Ross**_

**3.52 P.M, December 5****th****, 2004**

So now here he was. Back at the helm of the _James Clark Ross_. The hydraulic system was back up and running, and once more CJ was steering six thousand tons of B.A.S. ship into the teeth of the most ferocious storm in the history of humanity. Except now he had no real idea where he was steering them. With McIntyre dead, all he could do was follow the engineer's last instruction and keep the ship heading due west and hope that they wouldn't sink. He didn't know if this was the right thing to do, if in fat he was taking the three of them straight to their deaths, but given the prospect of certain death or probable death he would always go for the latter.

_Anyway…_

Back at the infirmary he and Chris had dragged the truncated corpse of Zoe Monroe into another cabin and had locked the door firmly behind them. There was nothing they could do about the rest of her which was splattered around them, so without a word CJ had got back into his cold weather survival gear and had tramped back up to the bridge for his hour at the helm.

As he stood there, face screwed up against the battering of wind and snow, he wondered how they were going to cope, just the two of them. Even before, when they had Tony Willis to help carry the burden, the job of keeping the _James Clark Ross' _bow pointed into the gale had been so physically and mentally draining that the two hour break they got between shifts had barely been enough time to recover. Now they were down to an hour, and CJ tried not to figure out how long it would be before one or both of them dropped from exhaustion, especially after the ordeal of the last hour.

Chris, he knew, was already at the limits of his endurance, much more so than himself. As if the body-sapping trip to the machine room and back wasn't enough, the mad flight from Zoe Monroe and its horrific end had pushed him to the very edge. When CJ had left the infirmary Chris was already asleep, curled up into a ball at the foot of the stretched on which his girlfriend lay. CJ had decided there and then that when his shift had finished he would go down and wake up his flatmate rather than expect him to wake up and be here on time for his shift on the bridge. It was only fair.

Of course it would be fairer just to let him sleep for as long as he needed, but since CJ knew if he tried that Chris would probably come up to find his frozen statue stood at the helm, he knew that fairness had its limits. Tony Willis had said one hour was the limit, and he wasn't going to argue, especially with a dead man.

Dead man…

He couldn't help it. His thoughts were dragged inexorably back to the corpse spread about outside the infirmary. He had seen death before. He'd been at his father's bedside when he'd died, remembered well the heart monitor going flat and giving out that final, monotone beeping. And of course, since this crisis had all begun he'd seen any number of people die. On the television, in coverage of those cataclysmic events sweeping the globe, and on the streets of Aberdeen during that crazed animal stampede. So death held no surprises for him.

But he'd never taken a life.

He had never committed murder.

Because that's what it had been, no two ways about it. He could have disarmed her, knocked her out. After all, he'd done it before, the first time she when she was hysterical in the infirmary. But this time, he had gone entirely on instinct, and without thinking had calmly pulled the trigger and killed another human being. He hadn't even given her a warning, for Christ's sake. He just seen her, stood there, mouth open and without so much as a moment's hesitation, blown her head off.

_Oh dear God, how far from home have I come?_

This descent into savagery burned at him inside like nothing he'd ever known. It had occurred to him, in the few quiet minutes he had managed to grab since coming aboard the ship, just how far beyond the normal boundaries his life had so far erected he would have to go to survive. But not for one second had he ever considered going this far. The ultimate crime.

He remembered sitting on his grandmother's knee when he was small, Bible held open in his small childish hands. And there it was, in black and white, the simple commandment '_Thou shalt not kill_'. Which he had broken.

Sure he had done most of the other things that the Catholic Church had – often literally – beaten into him were wrong. The sex before marriage thing for instance. Or going to church, which he hadn't done in years. But it wasn't like there was no part of him that deep down, didn't believe, truly believe that it was somehow pissing off the man upstairs, which is why they had invented Confession.

But this, _this_ was one step beyond, and if he hadn't realised it before, then now there was truly no way back. His old life was gone forever, and as for whatever lay before him, well, there was no map or guide, not any more. In more ways than one, he was sailing blind.


	43. Revelations

_**R.R.S. James Clark Ross**_

**7.00 A.M, December 8****th****, 2004**

Three days went past. CJ and Chris had by now developed a routine. It was a punishing, body-destroying routine, but it was either that or die, so both of them knuckled down and got on with it, praying with rapidly diminishing strength that it would all be over soon.

It was a simple routine, there was only so much that the pair of them could accomplish on the brutal one hour on, one hour off schedule forced upon them. When not at the helm, they would spend most of their time in the infirmary, helplessly watching Donna and trying to recharge their depleted batteries. CJ had managed to find the galley and had scavenged some food. It was served cold of course, the experiments trying to heat tins of beans and chilli had very nearly burned down the infirmary.

Chris was also trying his best to feed Donna, but she was now nearly permanently unconscious and CJ thought he was on a hiding to nothing. He could see her fading fast, almost before his very eyes, and he had given silent thanks that this wasn't Jenni before him. Indeed it was almost a relief, a comfort, that Jenni was beyond saving and by now was probably dead. The very thought of his love ebbing away in a freezing infirmary many miles from home was enough to cause him actual physical pain.

They were doing the best they could, and they had to hope that was enough.

Chris was at the helm when, once again, the hydraulic system failed.

He didn't notice at first. The storm was so violent that he hadn't noticed any change in course. He didn't notice in fact until he looked down at the compass and saw with a jolt that the needle was swinging away from the due west course he was struggling to keep them on. McIntyre had taught them about this, and he responded by swinging the wheel over to correct it. He didn't start to worry until a minute later when it appeared that turning the wheel was having absolutely no effect.

Now fear began to grow within the pit of his stomach, gnawing away at his insides. And then the fear became full blown panic when the _James Clark Ross_ suddenly rolled heavily to one side and then kept on rolling. Chris hung frantically on to the wheel as the deck tilted beneath his feet to a terrifying angle. It seemed to him as if the ship would never recover and he closed his eyes and prayed that his death would be quick. The sound of groaning steel rose above the ever-present howl of the storm and seemed to fill the world.

The ship reached a sixty-degree list and then slowly, painfully, righted itself. Chris felt his legs collapse and just hung off the wheel, now almost utterly defeated. His heart became a black pit of despair at the thought of having to make the murderous voyage to fix the hydraulic system once again. He wanted to sink to the ground and just weep in frustration, and for now any kind of exertion just seemed like an impossible task. So he just stood for now, trying, and failing to summon up the energy to do anything more than wait there and die.

The ship rolled again, and this time Chris could hear the roaring sound of water cascading into the hull. Tears rolled freely from his eyes. He couldn't do anything but wait for the end and he hated himself for it. For being weak, docile, too ready to accept his fate.

_But I'm so tired! _ His inner voice wailed. _I can't take any more!_

And then Donna's face floated across his vision, and in that instant he felt fire rising up inside of him, and that was enough to move him off away from the helm. For a second adrenaline did its job, and that second was all he needed. It would demand it's bill later with interest but after all that had happened he would accept it. However long it would take he would pay the bill if meant Donna would live.

He couldn't remember the journey down to the infirmary, couldn't remember telling CJ about the hydraulics, or his flatmate dashing off to the bridge to check the instrument panel to double-check that the lines had indeed lost pressure again. He couldn't remember much from that small, cold, clinical room, except Donna. It seemed so unfair that he had to say goodbye to her again, to make the same promise to come back. Still, this time, he knew what he was doing. There would be no surprises this time. Granted it would be awful and brutal, but what it wouldn't be was unknown. He had done it before, he could do it again.

And then the next thing he knew he and CJ were stood at the after hatch of D deck, tied together with a lifeline that had nearly got him killed the last time he came out here. The hatch was still open from his frantic escape from Zoe Monroe a few days earlier, but there was no sign of the carnage that had taken place here. No blood, and no McIntyre. But then again, with huge surges of water inundating the place with numbing regularity, that was hardly a surprise.

Chris thought about the last time he had been here, remembered the belly-full of fear that had nearly paralysed him, and marvelled that all he felt was merely tense. Sure, there were nerves, but he knew he could do this, and he felt with wonder a sense of confidence, something that had been all too lacking in his life.

_I don't believe it_, he thought._ I can't believe it would take something like this for me to finally feel this good._ But it had and he did, and all he could do was take one step forward and out into the rest of his life.


	44. Once More Unto The Breach

_**R.R.S. James Clark Ross**_

**7.47 A.M, December 8****th****, 2004**

They had barely got five feet when a wall of water rolled in from their right and sent them both sprawling up against the nearest bulkhead. The impact felt seismic, bone-shaking even, and both of them cried out in pain. Chris remembered the lessons learnt the last time he was out here, and advanced slowly, keeping one eye out for the next monster wave and ducking whenever it rolled in.

So, they progressed in this fashion. Inching along the railing, both crouching down whenever a new torrent of water fell upon them.

CJ was appalled, astounded by the ferocity of the storm. Whenever a new wave came crashing down it felt as if the skin had been stripped from his back. And almost as bad was the backwash, which came as the water rolled of the deck and tried its level best to drag them with it. Every time this happened his heart almost leapt out his chest in panic as the mighty Atlantic sucked hungrily at his body.

He looked up to see Chris crouched by the railings and frantically gesturing at something out to sea. CJ followed the direction he was pointing at, and for a second saw nothing. Then he did, and for one useless second his heart swelled with relief.

There was another ship out there!

It was a massive cruise liner, probably no more than a quarter of a mile away. And by some miracle it was illuminated from stem to stern. It was a glorious sight, a sign of civilisation's defiance against the rage of the superstorm. CJ stared at it in awe, his jaw dropping.

Another deluge fell upon them, and when CJ had blinked the water out of his eyes, a second glance at the liner told him that the defiance was reaching its end. The huge ship was pitching and rolling, and, he realised, completely out of control. Sure the lights were on, but those on board were stuck in the same situation as they were, helpless and adrift.

Though, on reflection, those passengers were probably a bit more comfortable than the survivors of the _James Clark Ross_. Despite the battering, he smirked at this.

Then the howling tumult closed in on them once again, and they lost sight of the liner, whatever she was.

It took them another fifteen minutes to get to the aft hatch. Fifteen minutes of inching ever forward, ducking to avoid being washed away, then continuing onwards once the mountain of water had subsided. CJ didn't know how they managed it. Every time he looked up, it seemed as if they had made no progress at all. But here they were, they had made it.

When it happened, it came suddenly and without warning. Chris had just reached the aft hatch, his eyes burning and his lungs full of water, and laid hands on the locking wheel. He was just tensing his arms and shoulders, summoning up the last of his fading strength, when a mountain of water fell from above. With panic coursing through his veins he hung onto the wheel grimly and pressed his body against the hatch in a desperate attempt to give the snatching sea as little surface to grab as possible.

CJ was doing much the same, wrapped around a bollard with his head tucked between his arms. So it was only with the corner of his eye that he saw something, something huge and orange come falling in the cascade of plummeting water. It missed him by a matter of inches. Chris Emond, helpless and exposed six feet away, was hit squarely in the body and face by a ten foot long inflatable life raft pod. In an instant he was whipped bodily away towards the railings.

CJ had maybe half a second to react, and it was not enough. He felt the connecting rope between them go tight and before he could draw breath he was yanked backwards and dragged towards the edge of the deck. He had a confused impression of water and ice and an earth-ending sound. Then before he could even think about this and arrange these impressions into something like a clear idea there was a white-hot explosion in the centre of his back. It was agony, a thousand agonies and he screamed through a veil of icy seawater as he was smashed into some unseen object and brought up short a few inches from a watery grave.

Trying to fight against the grey fog of pain which was descending over his eyes, he twisted his broken body to see what had stopped him being swept into the eager clutches of the mountainous Atlantic. It was one of the white stanchions of the railing which he was now pressed against, the connecting rope was hanging over the edge of the deck, and the dead weight on the other end was pinning him in place. Contorting himself still further, barely able to move and definitely not looking forward to what he was about to see, he peered over the edge of the deck.

Five feet below him, well out of reach, the limp form of Chris Emond swung wildly, the motion of the shi smashing him cruelly into the red steel of the hull. CJ knew he had only a few seconds to haul Chris back onto the deck before the weight of his flatmate pulled him from this relatively safe position and over the edge.

With one arm trapped below his body, this was going to be doubly hard. With his free hand he grabbed the rope and pulled. The result was pathetic. He managed to pull Chris up about six inches but another huge surge broke over him and he lost his grip on the rope. The sudden jerk back against the railings sent another firestorm of pain through his back and he screamed again. He decided something was broken in there, then pushed it too the back of his mind and once more tried hauling at the rope. This time he pulled his friend up eight inches before the strength deserted his arm and his grip failed once again.

Once again he was yanked hard against the railing, and now he coughed reflexively, and blood sprayed from his mouth. This terrified him beyond the capacity for rational thought.

_He was being torn in half!_

And following on the heels of that thought came another, one which astounded him with its clarity. He knew what he must do next. With his one free hand he scrabbled for the cam at his waist, unscrewed it and watched the rope holding Chris Emond on the ship vanish into the night.

He turned and looked overboard. What happened next occurred in grisly slow motion, and would replay itself in CJ Greenough's mind for the rest of his days.

The rope played out, went slack, and at that exact moment Chris' eyes slammed open and glared at CJ through a mask of blood with a mixture of incomprehension and rage. For a second he seemed to hang in space, then a flash of lightening split the sky in half and an almighty wall of water effortlessly engulfed the skinny figure.

CJ stared at the patch of water where Chris had vanished, praying with all his heart that his friend would reappear. He ignored the salt burning his eyes and the wind searing his face and gaped forlornly, a kind of idiot hope attempting to simply rematerialize his flatmate.

A minute passed and CJ was wracked by a convulsive spasm of coughing once again. Blood positively sprayed this time.

So that was it then. The end was here.

Without knowing why, he hauled himself to his feet, blood running over his chin, and began the painful journey back to the superstructure to wait.

For the end.


	45. We Can Breathe In Space

_**R.R.S. James Clark Ross**_

**9.02 A.M, December 8****th****, 2004**

CJ staggered into the infirmary, took two shaking steps and threw up. There was still blood mixed in with the bile and he wondered how much more he could afford to lose. He didn't care all that much, he was just curious as to how long this internal bleeding could continue before he passed the point of no return and lost consciousness and, presumably, died.

Donna was motionless on the bed. If he'd been paying attention he would have seen her chest moving, slowly, rhythmically, her breathing slow and steady, deep in sleep for the first time since all this had begun. As it was he barely saw her.

He looked down at his shivering body. His battered, wasted frame was soaked to the bone. His red survival suit was shredded and coated with ice. He struggled his way out of the jacket, and every part of his body, but especially his back exploded in white-hot sheets of agony. The pain was so extreme it dropped him to the deck and he screamed out loud in a way he never thought he was capable of.

Fresh blood ran from his mouth and spattered onto the floor, mixing with hot tears that ran freely from his eyes. A wave of dizziness washed over his brain, and he slumped further downwards as he arms gave up in their task of supporting him.

So here he was, lying flat on the deck, his cheek pressed against a slick mixture of blood and freezing water, and he began to feel his mind drifting. Intellectually he knew this was the first step on the road to death. Emotionally he just wasn't interested, beyond a sort of detached curiosity as to how long the process would take. A half-formed thought appeared in his brain and presented itself for his attention.

_Three-to-one three hours. Two-to-one it happens inside of five hours. I'll put a million pounds on it._

_At least I won't have to pay up if I'm right._

He sniggered, and presently the sniggering became giggling, which segued neatly into laughter, and before he knew it he was roaring hysterically, curled in the foetal position and shaking with the effort of stopping his lungs leaving him forcibly. A fresh bout of coughing put an end to that, but he remained on the deck, chuckling weakly, tears running down his cheeks and blood dribbling down his chin. For a second even the pain was forgotten.

He didn't know why he was laughing like this. Maybe it was the acceptance of death. Whatever happened next he couldn't stop it. In truth he had probably been finished the moment the Superstorm had formed up in the Artic Circle. Maybe all they had done by getting on this ship was delay the inevitable, given themselves just a few more days of life that they didn't really deserve. Death was coming for him, and whether it came in a house buried beneath a hundred feet of snow in Aberdeen, or on the floating hulk of the _James Clark Ross_, it was all the same.

_Come in number one-six-nine, your time is up._

His mind meandered back to his home, _in Yorkshire. It was August. The sun was just above the horizon, in its final moments before descending for the day, and he bathed in its rich amber light. Behind his house on the outskirts of town, a dense wood grew along the path of a long-gone railway track. In summer, it was a dense, rich, practically primeval woodland, green and lush. It was a good place to get lost in, and he often did. He enjoyed it, being lost in a vast, sylvan environment with just the sounds of nature busily going on around him and the inside of his own mind for company._

_But he wasn't there right now. Instead he was sat on the mock wrought iron bench on the back patio, positioned just right to bask in the light from the evening sun. Steaks and burgers were sizzling merrily away on an ancient, rusty barbeque. The coals were now burning redly, and smoke wound into the darkening sky. He had bottles of San Miguel Especial chilling in a bucket full of iced water, along with a bottle of Stolichnaya vodka and another of coke. He draped one hand over the side of the bench and let his fingers drift idly through the water before curling around the neck of a gloriously cold bottle of Spanish lager. He pulled it out, hearing droplets cascading from its body and rippling in the bucket._

_He opened the bottle and brought the rim to his lips. Gorgeously chilled lager cascaded into his mouth. As he tilted his head back the setting sun dazzled him for a second, before a shape moved before it. He couldn't make out much, just a dark figure that seemed to tower above him. But this didn't scare him. He was reassured. He was back home, and back in time before the cold and the pummelling ocean. There was no infirmary, no broken bodies scattered throughout the ship, no trail of corpses leaving a grisly trail in their wake. There was just his home, and the woman he loved._

_Tomorrow he was going back to Aberdeen. Back to Uni, and this time he was going to do it right, but before then there was just one more night where he was complete._

_The last night._

_And the summer had been perfection. And tonight was that one final union of two bodies; his, and the woman he knew he would spend the rest of his life with._

_He was so wrong about these final moments _lying on the deck of the battered infirmary. The blood that decorated the room, both dry and fresh was almost unreal here. The stink of vomit and sweat and fear and misery and loneliness were much less real than _the perspiring bottle of lager. The feel of the warm body that he was his alone to have. The smiling, open face that drew closer to his. The soft warm lips that pressed against his own._

_The bottle tumbled from his grip, but he never heard it land. There was nowhere for it to land. The world was fading, drifting, retreating, and darkness closed in around the two bodies, locked together for all time._

Not aware of anything very much at all, he closed his eyes and felt the all-encompassing blackness well up inside of him.

And then he smiled. It was all okay. At long, long last it was all okay.

In that one, perfect moment. 

_Forever._


	46. No Place I Can Be Since I Found Serenity

…_forever…_

"CJ."

A soft voice, floating through the darkness.

"Wake up…"

Beyond the black, silence. Serenity. A stillness he had not known for a thousand years.

_More like a million._

"… please wake up…"

_Why?_

Then pain. Pain like nothing he'd ever known filled him like lightening. Every muscle from head to toe screamed its distress and his entire body arched away the deck in one almighty spasm of anguish.

Then it was over. CJ fell limp, panting hard, and finally opened his eyes, not totally sure what vision would greet him.

Donna.

"Donna?"

He sat up suddenly and finally the world swam into focus. He was still on the deck where he had fallen. The infirmary was pitch black except for the flickering glow of a simple white emergency candle. It was a scene he had closed his eyes to in the confident expectation of never seeing it again.

_I was praying I'd never see it again._

But that wasn't what shocked him the most.

Donna was crouched next to him. Her broken arm still held rigidly in a splint, her good arm holding the candle close to his face. He tried to assemble a sentence, but even that simple function was beyond him. Instead his mouth flapped uselessly as he brain struggled to come to terms with this new reality.

But one final piece of information was yet to present itself. And when it did so it just convinced him that he had in fact died.

It was the silence. The complete, total, utter silence that seemed to press in on his brain like a weight. The scream of the storm and the roar of the ocean had gone, to be replaced by this unearthly quiet.

_So this is the afterlife, _he thought. _And it's exactly the same as the last life. Super. Twenty years as a Catholic and this is the thanks I get._

"Oh thank God, you're awake."

"Yeah, I'm awake." _Probably._

"Where's Chris?"

_Oh God, no._ CJ swallowed. His throat was dry, and beneath the sudden burst of guilt in his heart his stomach began inappropriately signalling it's protest. But right now he knew precisely one thing, and that was that he was not going to tell Donna he had murdered her boyfriend. It was without a doubt a despicable thing to do, but he just couldn't imagine how he could possibly tell her the truth.

_Hey, Donna. You'll never guess what happened. Funny story really…_

Besides, they might actually be dead themselves, in which case it didn't really matter.

"I don't know," he began slowly. "Last thing I remember was him going up to the bridge…"

"How long ago was that?"

"I…" He stopped. He wasn't acting now; he really had no idea how long he had been laid out here. He remembered… what had happened on deck… then coming back here, and that's when it all got hazy. All he could remember was an overwhelming sensation of peace, and then nothing until Donna had woken up. But he felt that there was something he was missing, a feeling that there was a memory just out his grasp. He shook his head angrily. The lie, he needed to focus on that.

"Sorry," he said lamely. "What about you?"

"I just… woke up. About an hour ago." Donna shrugged, clearly unable to articulate what had happened to her. "The last thing I remember is Chris telling me he was going to the bridge, but I couldn't tell you when."

"We should check the bridge then. He might be up there." Slowly CJ hauled himself to his feet, and was overcome by a crippling wave of dizziness. He stumbled, his equilibrium thrown totally off-balance. He put out one arm against the wall to steady himself, and was rewarded with an excruciating stab of pain in his back. He gasped with the ferocity of it, and when it combined with the dizziness it was almost enough to drive him to his knees.

And then realisation dawned. The deck was canted at a twenty-degree angle. This was not unusual on the voyage. What was _unusual_ was that it wasn't moving. He found himself having to stand at a tilt just to remain upright. The strain that being in this awkward position put on his back make him grimace, but he managed to make it out into the passageway, trailing on hand along the wall in case he slipped.

He skidded down the slope into the far wall. Pain blossomed again, but he was learning to live with it. The stunning cold helped for once, numbing his body. As he rested for a second to wait for the dizziness to leave he noticed that the silence even included the engines. Ever since they had come aboard the _James Clark Ross_ the regular pounding of the massive engines had been a constant background presence, and now it was gone.

_So_, CJ thought, trying to get his mind in gear_, the engines have stopped, but if that had happened then we should have sunk. I think._

_Had _they sunk? Maybe somehow this deck had remained airtight, or something.

_Bollocks._ This wasn't the bloody _Poseidon Adventure_ for crying out loud. _Well, I'm not going to find out anything down here. The only way is up_.

He looked back at Donna. She was leaning against the doorframe, wrapped in a blanket and breathing hard. For the first time he noticed how weak she appeared in her current state. He reached out to take her good arm.

"Are you alright to be walking?" he asked.

"I want to know where he is, CJ," was the reply. There was steel in her voice, which was pushing her body beyond its limits. But she took his proffered hand anyway.

"Well, watch your footing then. This floor's still as icy as hell."

He led her through passageways and up stairs made treacherous by the ice and by the crazed angle everything had taken on. The whole world seemed to be off-kilter, and the contrasting messages from what his eyes were telling him and what his body was telling him gave him an uneasy sense of nausea. More than once he had to close his eyes and give his head a shake as he felt his stomach rise in protest.

It took them a while, because both CJ and Donna were in weakened states, but finally they reached the last stairway leading up the bridge. It was still as CJ remembered it, a tricky, frozen waterfall. But this time it was bathed in the purest white light he had ever known. It was freezing cold, but the air was still. Unbidden, the memory of his first winter in Aberdeen, that first morning when he woke up find snow outside, rose in his mind. Even without looking, he knew the storm was over. For the first time in what felt like forever, he couldn't feel the crushing weight of the atmospheric depression crushing down from the sky.

With a trembling sense of exaltation rising in him, he staggered up the stairs, almost dragging Donna behind him. She could feel it too, the indefinable, everywhere sense of the ordeal ending.

The practically tumbled onto the bridge. CJ's mouth dropped open. The familiar vista of the tormented Atlantic was gone, and they both had to shade their eyes against what had replaced it.

The _James Clark Ross_ was stuck solid in a field of ice that stretched to the horizon. Glorious, pure sunlight reflected off it in a wave that seemed to fill the whole world. CJ took a few faltering steps forward, until he was out of the ravaged remains of the bridge and out in the open. His breath froze before him in fragile, crystalline clouds as he looked upwards into a sky of the purest blue, and clearer than he had ever known. A thin wind drifted around him, but he barely noticed it, barely noticed anything in face beyond the gorgeous azure arch of the heavens.

Donna came alongside, her good arm clutching the blanket around her neck. She was shivering slightly, but she too thought of nothing but the surreal, achingly beautiful panorama that surrounded them.

"Where are we?" she whispered, too awed to speak any louder.

CJ had no answer, not a clue. He wandered further on, out to the open bridge platform, and then he had his answer.

There were no words for what he saw before him. Nothing in twenty years of life could prepare him for this.

Towering, high, high above them was what was undoubtedly the frozen, battered upper half of the Statue of Liberty. And beyond it stood the icy cold spires of the corpse of New York City.


	47. Epilogue : The Mexican Border 2012

**The U.S./Mexico Border**

**3.58 A.M, May 1st****, 2012**

The first chink of the sun crept above the dusty horizon, and Private Ritchie Malone begun to make out the first lines of his crewmates in the ghostly grey light of dawn. PFC Shawn Burton, the driver, sat in his coffin-shaped compartment, staring south at the barrage that flashed on that horizon, and the vehicle commander, Sergeant Callum Johnson lay on top of the Bradley's turret, chain-smoking and gazing at the stars.

Malone looked at his watch. The glowing hands read two minutes to four in the morning. _So, two minutes to go_. Two minutes until Burton started the engine, and the US invasion of Mexico began. They would be amongst the first ground troops to cross the border. The Air Force and Navy had been bombing positions the length and breadth of the country for a week, and resistance was expected to be light. Of course Malone knew better than to believe anything he was told by Command, which is why he had written his will before setting out.

Meanwhile his guts were doing somersaults as he paced nervously in the dirt. He made a decision whilst trying not to piss for the fifteenth time today.

"Sarge?"

"Hmm?" Johnson replied, without moving.

"Can I get a smoke?"

The southern horizon erupted with a particularly large glow. A few seconds went by, then the muffled _CRUMP _of the detonation reached them, rolling across the landscape like a wave.

Johnson sat up, fished out a Marlboro and tossed it down, along with a box of matches. Malone lit the cigarette, inhaled deeply, and then coughed frantically. He had never smoked before. He was only eighteen after all, and before joining the Army had lived in the big camp outside of Houston, where nicotine was a long way down the list of priorities.

After a second the drug hit his bloodstream, and he felt his body relax slightly. Not much, but just enough to stop him bringing his meagre breakfast back up.

"Thanks, Sarge," he said, stamping his feet against the cold.

There was a sound of running water coming from the back of the Bradley. PFC Nelson Fuller, one of the two soldiers the tank carried, was relieving himself noisily against the track. The noise was drowned out by the scream of an Air Force bomber thundering by overhead. Automatically Malone looked up, and caught a quick glimpse of an A-10 Thunderbolt streaking South, keeping just a few hundred feet above the earth.

Tonight was cold and clear, stars twinkled frostily in a cobalt blue sky. A chill wind blew from the ice fields to the North. It wasn't as noticeable here at the border, but it was there, slowly creeping into your bones. He had been eleven when that ice had been laid down, and found it difficult to actually remember things being any different. Sarge was different, since he was ten years older. He could remember a time before the everlasting winter, although he never talked about it, and as far as he could make out, nobody ever asked.

Sarge was always serious, a cynic. He often got in trouble with his superiors, and no doubt would still be a PFC if it weren't for his undoubted talent and leadership abilities. Malone doubted if there was a better Brad commander in the whole division, and he thanked his lucky stars that he was on this crew. It might in the end be the difference between coming home alive or coming home in a crate. But Johnson inspired the best in his men with a mixture of praise, discipline and leading by example. Plus he always knew where to get cigarettes and booze. He knew people, knew how the wheels of the Army were greased and therefore how to get the most of it.

The radio crackled. Instantly the men of Blue Five were alert, except for the Sarge, who still lay gazing up at the night sky.

"Blue Six to Blue Troop." This was the voice of the Troop commander. This was it then. "_FOXFIRE_. I repeat _FOXFIRE_. Deployment pattern Charlie. Out."

FOXFIRE was the go word. Burton started the engine, and all along the battle line the massed tanks and Humvees of the 1st Armoured Division, one part of the vast Continental Army Command, roared into life. One top of the turret, Sergeant Johnson got to his feet and looked down at his men.

"Okay guys. Here we go. Keep your heads and do your jobs and I guarantee we will get back alive." He tossed his cigarette into the dirt and climbed into the commander's cupola in the turret. Malone clambered up into the gunner's position.

"Mike check," Johnson ordered. Four voices sang back into his headphones. "Great. Button her up." Fuller and Corporal Frank Ryder locked the rear hatch, and he and Malone pulled down their respective hatches.

Malone felt his chest constrict as he sealed himself in. But there was nothing unusual about this. He always got a touch of claustrophobia in here, but it had never been enough to distract him from his job. Besides, when they were deep in the shit, the last thing on his mind was how comfortable he was.

"Okay, Burton. Take us out." Malone felt some relief from the Sergeant's voice. It was level, steady, but with that trace of an accent which had been tempered over the years with a Texan drawl.

There was a reason for this, but it was one of the things nobody ever asked him about, and even if they did, Johnson wouldn't tell them. And there was an excellent explanation for this.

Callum Johnson was a dead man. His identity had been stolen in the chaotic days following the Superstorm. His family and friends – those that were still alive – would know the man called Callum Johnson by another name.

CJ Greenough took in a deep breath as the Bradley rocked forward. He had, he figured, one week before the world he had built for himself came crashing down. War or not, he was probably going to be shot as a traitor in seven days' time.

**TO BE CONTINUED…**

* * *

_**AUTHOR'S NOTE: Hello there, Sputnik here. How you doing? I presume since you reading this, you got to the end.**_

_**Cheers.**_

_**Since you got this far, maybe you're willing to go a little further. You see, I imagine it takes a lot of time and fair bit of effort to reach the end, and believe me, I really appreciate it. So well done.**_

_**Just one thing. You read the whole thing, yeah? So all I ask is one more little favour of you.**_

_**Please review this story, even if its only 'Bugger off' or 'XD'. You can't believe how much it means to me when I see that little word REVIEW in the subject header of my inbox, so if you enjoyed **_**'Odyssey'**_** then all I ask is you take a few more minutes to tell me what you think.**_

_**So, once again, thanks for getting here, I hope you had a good time.**_

_**TTFN**_

_**Sputnik.**_


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